Fallen
by hutcherwife
Summary: Fallen characters read Fallen.
1. Prologue

My first Fallen fanfic. Go easy on me?

Well, here goes nothing.

* * *

There were nine of them.

Nine of them seated on a circular table.

One minute ago, Luce had been sitting on her bed, reading her favorite book, and the next she was sitting with eight other people with her. All nine of them were sitting in a room, nothing else visible except white. They had the same bewildered look she had. Confused glances as all of them searched their surroundings. One of them had even tried to get up her chair, to only find that she couldn't.

"What the hell?" she shouted, "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Calm down, Arriane," a boy said. His dreads are all over his face, which made Luce want to lean in and uncover them from his face. "Obviously, we're here for a reason."

Suddenly, a booming voice echoed. "Unfortunately, Mr Sparks is right."

All jumps suddenly, surprised at the voice. Recognition dawned on most of their faces, except another girl and Luce. The girl, she realized, had layers of clothing on; more than necessary. _What is going on? _Luce thought.

The voice continued, "Most of you already know who I am, and are familiar with my presence. To those who don't, I am the Spirit. And you shall know me as the Throne."

The mighty words echoed throughout the room. Excited looks form on the others' faces, some, though, have worry flashed in it. A boy -he had bright blond hair and gray eyes, strangely tinted with violet- gasped at the sight of her. He did a double take. _Why would he do that? We don't know each other... _Luce shrugged the feeling off.

"All of you are probably wondering what you are doing here. One of our transeternals has intercepted a book; a book that united all of you here now." The voice paused. "Containing this book is vital information. It holds what will happen in the future. It is important that you do not share this information with others; for it is important that whatever the information that book withholds should stay here. Good luck," the voice says.

Suddenly, there is a flash of light, so bright that Luce has to cover her eyes. She looks at the others, and see that they are doing the same. Then the flash withdraws and it is gone.

There is a collective awkward silence from the group. No one speaks. Then the girl -Arriane, she remembered- breaks the silence.

"Well, let's get started, shall we?"

The other girl, the one with many layers of clothing, speaks. "Just a question, but what _exactly _are transeternals? And what the _heck _are we doing here?" she asks Arriane.

A boy -he had dark brown hair, and the most mesmerizing green eyes- spoke for Arriane. "Transeternals. They're practically mortals, but somehow their look alikes," he says, casually. He looks at her. "And that's why we're here, isn't it? To find out what that," he gestures to the book, "Contains." He shrugs. "Whatever it contains must be so important."

The girl scowls at him, but doesn't say anything. She rolls her eyes, instead.

Another girl speaks, to break the tension. "Well, hiya guys. I'm Gabbe," she says with a Southern accent; that Luce couldn't help but admire. She had bright blond hair, too, and perfectly manicured pink nails. She envied this girl.

Beside her, a girl with pink hair spoke. "Annabelle," she said, and waved her hand to her seatmate, who looked like she could kill somebody. _If looks could kill, _Luce thought.

"Molly," the glaring girl spoke.

"Roland," the boy with the dreads said.

"Daniel," the boy with blond hair -who was so surprised to see her- said. His face gave no sign of emotion, though Luce could've sworn that he looked her way just for a minute.

Arriane yelled. "Well you already know my name! But anyway, I'm Arriane!" She waved. Annabelle and Roland slapped her, playfully, and she pouted. Molly rolled her eyes.

The girl beside her said, "Pennyweather Van-Syckle Lockwood. But you can call me Penn." She grins triumphantly. Everyone looks at her blankly.

"Did you have to mention your _full _name?" Molly asked. Penn's face drops, and Luce immediately decided that she did not like Molly.

Daniel scowls. "Molly," he says in a dangerous tone.

Molly huffs and rolls her eyes again. Once everyone's attention is directed to me, I say my name.

"Lucinda," I say uneasily, "Luce."

The last boy. He grins, which makes him look cuter than normal. Luce blushes, embarassed by her thoughts, and feels something flutter inside her. "Cam," he says. He turns to Luce and winks, which makes her blush even more.

Daniel, however, is glaring daggers at Cam. Woah. And I thought it was only Molly's looks that could kill.

It is Annabelle breaks the tension. "Well, let's get started, shall we?"

* * *

Okaaaaaay so I guess this was an okay start. How 'bout for you guys?

Anyway, review. c:


	2. In The Beginning

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen, OK?**

* * *

"Who starts reading?"

Arriane, the first to speak up after introducing ourselves, asks everyone. No one answers, until Luce's seatmate, Cam, speaks up.

"Well, technically," he says with a yawn, "It's in Luce's point-of-view, so she should start."

Everyone looked at Luce. Her eyes were downcast, displaying no emotion but fear. _Is this book appropriate for a sixteen-year old? _she thinks. But she only says, "Fine."

Luce stares at the cover, a girl wearing a long dress and some kind of glove, covering her face with her pale hands. She gulps, and reaches for the book, and opens it.

**IN THE BEGINNING, **she read.

**Helston, England. September 1854. **

Everyone except Luce, Penn, and Molly gasps. Daniel's face pales visibly, Arriane clutches Roland's hand. They all remembered what happened to Luce that year. Penn shoots Luce a confused expression. Luce just shrugs. Molly says, "Just get on with it!"

Luce nods.

**Around midnight, her eyes at last took shape. The look in them was feline, half determined and half tentative- all trouble. Yes, they were just right, those eyes. Rising up to her fine, elegant, brow, inches from the dark cascade of her hair. **

Luce took a deep breath before reading again.

**He held the paper at arm's length to assess his progress. It was hard, working without her in front of him, but then, he could sketch in her presence. Since he had arrived from London-no, since he had first seen her-he'd had to be careful always to keep her at a distance. **

Daniel listens with a grim face. Roland squeezes Arriane's hand. Annabelle and Gabbe put their faces in their palms, still listening. Cam leaned back in his chair, exasperated. Luce didn't know who she was talking about. Penn understood that it was Daniel.

**Every day now she approached him, and every day was more difficult than the one before. It was why he was leaving in the morning-for India, for the Americas, he didn't know or care. Wherever he ended up, it would be easier than being here.**

Daniel sighed. _That was always true, _he thought.

**He leaned over the drawing again, sighing as he used his thumb to perfect the smudged charcoal pout of her full bottom lip. This lifeless paper, cruel imposter, was the only way to take her with him.**

**Then, straightening up in the leather library chair, he felt it. That brush of warmth on the back of his neck.**

_**Her. **_

**Her mere proximity gave him the most peculiar sensation, like the kind of heat sent out when a log shatters to ash in a fire. He knew without turning around: She was there. He covered her likeness on the bound papers in his lap, but he could not escape her.**

_Is he talking about... me? _Luce thought. She was confused on who was the boy in this story, which was yet to be found out.

**His eyes fell on the ivory-upholstered settee across the parlor, where only hours earlier she'd turn up unexpectedly, later than the rest of her party, in a rose silk gown, to applaud the eldest daughter of their host after a fine turn at the harpsichord. He glanced across the room, out the window to the veranda, where the day before she'd crept up on him, a fistful of wild white peonies in her hand. She still thought the pull she felt toward him was innocent,**

_Yes, I feel that, too, _Luce thought. _How can I feel so attracted to one person in this room? _

**that their frequent rendezvous in the gazebo were merely... happy coincidences. To be so naive! He would never tell her otherwise-the secret was his to bear.**

**He stood and turned, the sketches left behind on the leather chair. And there she was, pressed against the ruby velvet curtain, in her plain white dressing gown. Her black hair had fallen from its braid. The look on her face was one he'd sketched so many times. There was fire, rising in her cheeks. Was she angry? Embarassed? He longed to know, but could not allow himself to ask.**

Everyone was silent. All eyes were on Daniel, except Luce's. She still did not understand that it was Daniel she was reading about. _Poor girl, _everyone thought. Cam's lips were pursed together, and he did not say anything. Luce began to read again.

**"What are you doing here?" He could hear the snarl in his voice, and regretted its sharpness, knowing she would never understand.**

_She never could, _Daniel thought. Somehow he had managed to relive this memory this far without tearing out his hair.

**"I-I couldn't sleep," she stammered, moving toward the fire and his chair. "I saw the light in your room and then"-she paused, looking down at her hands-"your trunk outside the door. Are you going somewhere?"**

**"I was going to tell you-" He broke off. He shouldn't lie. **

_Yes, he shouldn't, _Cam thought.

**He had never intended to let her know his plans. Telling her would only make things worse. Already, he had let things go too far, hoping this time would be different.**

**She drew nearer, and her eyes fell on his sketchbook. "You were drawing me?"**

Arriane sighed. Daniel had told her and the others what had happened that night. She remembered the broken face he had on, and the tears streaming down his face. That day was another nightmare in his life.

Annabelle pondered. _Shouldn't Lucinda be gone by now? _She thought. _She always vanished at times like this. _She inwardly gasped. _Maybe things are different. _

**Her startled tone reminded him how great the gap was in their understanding. Even after all the time they'd spent together these past few weeks, she had not yet begun to glimpse the truth that lay behind their attraction.**

**This was good-or at least, it was for the better. For the past several days, since he'd made the choice to leave, he'd been struggling to pull away from her. The effort took so much out of him that, as soon as he was alone, he had to give in to his pent-up desire to draw her. He had filled up his book with pages of her arched neck, her marble collarbone, the black abyss of her hair.**

Roland and Gabbe smiled. They both remembered the book that they had stolen from Daniel, the book that he had drawn thousand of pictures of her. They smiled at each other, they knew that every single detail of that is true.

Molly was distraught. _What's going to happen now? _She had thought. _This Lucinda sitting among us is only sixteen. Will the book tell what's going to happen to her? To us all?_

**Now, he looked back at the sketch, not ashamed at being caught drawing her, but worse. A cold chill spread through him as he realized that her discovery-the exposure of his feelings-would destroy her. He should have been more careful. It always began like this.**

_Yes, I should have. _Daniel looked down miserably.

**"Warm milk with a spoonful of treacle," he murmured, his back still to her. Then he added sadly, "It helps you sleep." **

**"How did you know? Why, that's exactly what my mother used to-"**

**"I know," he said, turning to face her. The astonishment in her voice did not surprise him, yet he could not explain to her how he knew, or tell her how many times he had administered this very drink to her in the past when the shadows came, how he had held her until she fell asleep.**

_Shadows? _Luce shuddered. Fear began to pool at the pit of her stomach. _The same shadows I've been seeing? _

**He felt her touch as though it were burning through his shirt, her hand laid gently on his shoulder, causing him to gasp. They had not yet touched in this life, and first contact always left him breathless. **

_This life? _Luce and Penn thought.

**"Answer me," she whispered. "Are you leaving."**

**"Yes."**

**"Then take me with you," she blurted out. Right on the cue, he watched her suck in her breath, wishing to take back her plea. He could see the progression of her emotions settle in the crease between her eyes: She would feel impetuous, then bewildered, then ashamed by her forwardness. She always did this, and too many times before, he had made the mistake of comforting her at this exact moment.**

_He would say no, _Roland thought sadly.

**"No," he whispered, remembering... always remembering... "I sail tomorrow. If you care for me at all, you won't say another word."**

**"**_**If **_**I care for you," she repeated, almost as if she were speaking to herself. "I-I **_**love**_**-"**

**"Don't."**

All the angels and demons glared at Daniel. Penn and Luce looked at him confusedly. He smiled sadly, at them all. "I had to do it, to protect her."

"You know perfectly well that if you leave, she'll follow, Daniel," Arriane had said.

He smiled, and looked at Luce. "Yes," he said slowly, "Yes she would."

**"I have to say it. I-I love you, I'm quite sure, and if you leave-"**

**"If I leave, I save your life." He spoke slowly, trying to reach a part of her that might remember. Was it there at all, buried somewhere? "Some things are more important than love. You won't understand, but you have to trust me."**

_Nothing's more important than love, _Penn thought, remembering her dead father.

**Her eyes drilled into him. She stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. This was his fault, too-he always brought out her contemptous side when he spoke down to her.**

**"You mean to say that there are things more important than this?" she challenged, taking his hands and drawing them to her heart.**

_If only you knew what was coming, _Daniel thought bitterly.

**Oh, to be her and not know what was coming! Or at least to be stronger than he was and be able to stop her. If he didn't stop her, she would never learn, and the past would only repeat itself, torturing them both again and again. **

**The familiar warmth of her skin under his hands made him tilt his head back and moan. He was trying to ignore how close she was, how well he knew the feel of her lips on his, how bitter he felt that all of this had to end. But her fingers traced his so lightly. He could feel her heart racing through her thin cotton gown.**

_Oh Lucinda, _Daniel had thought. _I miss you. _Daniel took a sneaking glance at Luce, and found that she was already looking at him. He could see the confusion in her eyes. He shook her head at her, as if saying, _Not here, not now. _

Daniel shook his head at her. She wondered what it meant. Did it mean that he was not the boy in the book? Did it mean that he was the boy, but didn't love her anymore? She wished to have a proper explanation, but none was given.

The others watched the silent communication between the two. All understood Daniel's actions, except the two mortals. But what would happen was yet to be found out.

Luce started reading.

**She was right. There was nothing more than this. There never was. He was about to give in and take her in his arms when he caught the look in her eyes. As if she'd seen a ghost. **

**She was the one to pull away, a hand to her forehead.**

**"I'm having the strangest sensation, " she whispered.**

**No-was it already too late?**

**Her eyes narrowed into the shape in his sketch and she came back to him, her hands on his chest, her lips parted expectantly. "Tell me I'm mad, but I swear I've been right here before... "**

The angels had a collective gasp. They looked at each other, and had a dreading look on their faces. Arriane and Annabelle's faces are somber. Gabbe's looked determined. Daniel put his head on his hands, not wanting to hear one more word out of Luce's mouth. He wanted to get away from here, and pretend that none of it happened. He willed it to be true.

Cam and Roland pursed their lips, not liking what they were hearing.

Molly, however, was reactionless. But deep inside, she could feel the sorrow rising up in her as well.

**So it was too late. He looked up, shivering, and could feel the dark descending. He took one last chance to seize her, to hold her as tightly as he'd been yearning to for weeks.**

**As soon as her lips melted into his, both of them were powerless. **

All of them smiled. Including Penn and Luce. Cam grinned, and winked at Daniel. And Luce knew at that moment that it was Daniel she was reading about.

**The honeysuckle taste of her mouth made him dizzy. The closer she pressed against him, the more his stomach churned with the thrill and the agony of it all. Her tongue traced his, and the fire between them burned brighter, hotter, more powerful with every new touch, every new exploration. Yet none of it was new.**

**The room quaked. An aura around them started to glow.**

All the angels knew what was going to happen. Daniel wiped a silent tear, remembering their moment that year.

**She noticed nothing, was aware of nothing, understood nothing besides their kiss. He alone knew what was about to happen, what dark companions were prepared to fall on their reunion. Even though he was unable to alter the course of their lives yet again, he knew.**

**The shadows swirled directly overhead, so close, he might have touched them. So close, he wondered whether she could hear what they were whispering. He watched as the cloud passed over her face. For a moment he saw a spark of recognition growing in her eyes.**

Everyone gasped, leaning on the edge of their chairs while anticipating for what was going to happen. The others knew, but for the two mortals, they had to learn about Luce's destiny.

**Then there was nothing, nothing at all.**

Luce slammed the book shut. Everyone stared at it, wondering how the author knew what was about to happen.

"H-how did she know about...?" Luce started.

Cam shook his head at his seatmate. "Transeternals can often have visions of the future," he offered, "But none as strong as this. Whoever she is, she must be one hell of them."

Luce look confused. "So you're saying, this _did _happen?"

Roland smiled at her. "Chill, the adventure's just starting."

* * *

A/N: Okaaaaaay, so that's a wrap everybody! Haha =)))))))))))

anyway, review! :

and i would love it if you followed me on twitter! if i don't recognize you, just tell me you were one of my reviewers/readers on :-)

my account name:

hutcherwife_


	3. Perfect Strangers

Hai guysss. So here's the new Chapter. I totally forgot that I made this chapter in advanced, cause i'm a total idiot. I freaking forgot that I made this in FREAKING ADVANCED. AGH.. fail.

Anw, enjoy? :)

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen. But sha-la-la-la, I wish I did!**

* * *

"Who's next?" Luce asked.

Cam grinned evily. "I am," he says and winks. She blushes. Although Luce felt a strange attraction towards the other boy, Daniel, she can't help but feel kind of attracted to her seatmate, Cam, as well. Both boys were gorgeous to her.

Daniel clears his throat, barging through Luce's thoughts, and Cam starts.

**ONE. PERFECT STRANGERS, **Cam says.

**Luce barged into the fluorescent-lit lobby of the Sword & Cross School ten minutes later than she should have. A barrel-chested attendant with ruddy cheeks**

Everyone except Luce groans. Annabelle laughs, and Arriane high-fives her.

"Why? Who is she?"

Surprisingly, Molly is the one who answers her. "Randy, that disgusting she-male dirt bag, who controls us all." She rolls her eyes.

Arriane points a finger at her. "Oooh, Molly is disgusted. Didn't know you had a weakness there, eh, Molly?" She giggles.

Molly rolls her eyes again. "Oh shut _up, _Arriane," she huffs.

**and a clipboard clamped under an iron bicep was already giving orders-which meant Luce was already behind. "So remember, it's meds, beds, and reds, " the attendant barked at a cluster of three other students all standing with their backs to Luce. "Remember the basics and no one gets hurt."**

"What the hell?" Luce suddenly cried. All eyes were on her. "Why would someone get hurt?" She wasn't sure, but this school sure sounded like an awful place.

Penn smiles sadly at her. "It's a reform school," she says.

Luce's face pales. "B-but why would I be there...?"

Cam shrugs. "Guess we'll find out."

**Luce hurried to slip in behind the group. She was still trying to figure out whether she'd filled out the giant stack of paperwork correctly, whether this shaven-headed**

All of them-except Luce, of course- crack up. Arriane's howling, and Roland is clutching his stomach. Luce fidgets, uncomfortable about this book. Why did she have so many embarassing thoughts? Why did she have to share this with _them_?

Annabelle snorts, "_Nice _one, Luce!"

**guide standing before them was a man or a woman, whether there was anyone to help her with this enormous duffel bag, whether her parents were going to get rid of her beloved Plymouth Fury the minute they arrived home from dropping her off here. They'd been threatening to sell the car all summer, and now they had a reason even Luce couldn't argue with: No one was allowed to have a car at Luce's new school. Her new reform school, to be precise.**

Luce pouts. _No car? _she thinks. _But I love my car! Why am I even stuck here in the first place? _

**She was still getting used to the term.**

**"Could you, uh, could you repeat that?" she asked the attendant, "What was it, meds-?"**

**"Well, look what the storm blew in, " the attendant said loudly, **

Daniel frowned.

**then continued, enunciating slowly: "Meds. If you're one of the medicated students, this is where you go to keep yourself doped up, sane, breathing, whatever. " Woman, Luce decided, studying the attendant. No man would be catty enough to say all that in such a saccharine tone of voice.**

The others grinned, keeping in their laughter. Penn failed terribly, snorts of laughter kept tumbling out of her. Arriane's face grew red. Daniel, whom Luce has never seen smile, was trying to cover his laugh in his hand. She grew annoyed.

**"Got it. " Luce felt her stomach heave. "Meds. "**

**She'd been off meds for years now. After the accident this past summer, **

"Accident?" Luce asked, horrified. The others shrugged. They didn't know what she was talking about, either.

**Dr. Sanford, her specialist in Hopkinton-and the reason her parents had sent her to boarding school all the way in New Hampshire-had wanted to consider medicating her again. Though she'd finally convinced him of her quasi-stability, it had taken an extra month of analysis on her part just to stay off those awful antipsychotics.**

_What the hell is wrong with me? _Luce asked herself, rubbing her forehead.

**Which was why she was enrolling in her senior year at Sword & Cross a full month after the academic year had begun. Being a new student was bad enough, and Luce had been really nervous about having to jump into classes where everyone else was already settled. But from the looks of this tour, she wasn't the only new kid arriving today.**

**She sneaked a peek at the three other students standing in a half circle around her.**

The others grinned sadistically around her, knowing well who was going to arrive, and who was already there. Penn smiled.

**At her last school, Dover Prep, the campus tour on the first day was where she'd met her best friend, Callie. **

Luce grinned. Molly glared at her. Cam read on.

**On a campus where all the other students had practically been weaned together, it would have been enough that Luce and Callie were the only non-legacy kids. But it didn't take long for the two girls to realize they also had the exact same obsession with the exact same old movies-especially where Albert Finney was concerned. **

Daniel and Cam frowned.

_Someone's clearly jealous, _Arriane thought evily. _Oh! Not just one, but two! _

**After their discovery freshman year while watching Two for the Road that neither one of them could make a bag of popcorn without setting off the fire alarm, Callie and Luce hadn't left each other's sides.**

The others snort.

**Until ... Until they'd had to.**

_What had she done so wrong that she had to go to Swords & Cross? _Daniel wondered.

**At Luce's sides today were two boys and a girl. The girl seemed easy enough to figure out, blond and Neutrogena-commercial pretty,with pastel pink manicured nails that matched her plastic binder.**

"Gabbe," every Sword & Crosstian drawled out. Including Cam and Arriane. They knew their friend pretty well, and if Gabbe was there, that meant that Arriane and Cam would be arriving as well.

**"I'm Gabbe, " she drawled, flashing Luce a big smile that disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced, before Luce could even offer her own name. The girl's waning interest reminded her more of a southern version of the girls at Dover than someone she'd expect at Sword & Cross. Luce couldn't decide whether this was comforting or not, any more than she could imagine what a girl who looked like this would be doing at reform school.**

Everyone frowned.

Gabbe, who was silent throughout the whole other chapter, said, "Hey, I'm not _that _bad." She flashed Luce a grin.

Everyone laughed, and Luce decided that she liked this girl.

**To Luce's right was a guy with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. But the way he wouldn't even meet her eyes, just kept picking at a hangnail on his thumb, gave Luce the impression that, like her, he was probably still stunned and embarrassed to find himself here.**

Everyone was confused. Neither of them knew who Cam was reading about.

"Todd Hammond," Penn said. Everyone looked at her. "What? He was supposed to study at S&C a year ago, but he begged his psychiatrist for another year at his old school." She shrugged it off, and Cam got back to reading.

**The guy to her left, on the other hand, fit Luce's image of this place a little bit too perfectly. He was tall and thin, with a Di bag slung over his shoulder, shaggy black hair, and large, deep-set green eyes. His lips were full and a natural rose color most girls would kill for. **

Cam smirked at Luce. She blushed.

**At the back of his neck, a black tattoo in the shape of a sunburst seemed almost to glow on his light skin, rising up from the edge of his black T-shirt.**

"You show it too much," Daniel remarked.

Cam rolled his eyes.

**Unlike the other two, when this guy turned to meet her gaze, he held it and didn't let go. His mouth was set in a straight line, but his eyes were warm and alive. He gazed at her, standing as still as a sculpture, which made Luce feel rooted to her spot, too. She sucked in her breath. Those eyes were intense, and alluring, and, well, a little bit disarming.**

Cam winked at Luce, which made Daniel glare at him. Cam wrapped his arms around her as her gaze fell to the floor. "I'm always here for you baby," he said as he smirked at Daniel. Her cheeks grew even redder than before, and Daniel grunted enviously. Molly smirked at him.

**With some loud throat-clearing noises, the attendant interrupted the boy's trancelike stare. Luce blushed and pretended to be very busy scratching her head. **

Arriane snorted. "Nice cover, Luce."

**"Those of you who've learned the ropes are free to go after you dump your hazards. " The attendant gestured at a large cardboard box under a sign that said in big black letters PROHIBITED MATERIALS, "And when I say free, Todd"-she clamped a hand down on the freckled kid's shoulder, making him jump-"I mean gymnasium-bound to meet your preassigned student guides. You"-she pointed at Luce-"dump your hazards and stay with me."**

Everyone shook their heads at Randy's words.

**The four of them shuffled toward the box and Luce watched, baffled, as the other students began to empty their pockets. The girl pulled out a three-inch pink Swiss Army knife. The green-eyed guy **

Cam let his face drop, mockingly. "Fine, call me the green-eyed guy," he said to Luce.

"I didn't know your name then," she pointed out.

"Point taken."

**reluctantly dumped a can of spray paint and a box cutter. Even the hapless Todd let loose several books of matches and a small container of lighter fluid. Luce felt almost stupid that she wasn't concealing a hazard of her own-but when she saw the other kids reach into their pockets and chuck their cell phones into the box, she gulped. **

Everyone laughed at Luce, including herself. But inside, it was killing her. _No cell phone? _She thought to herself. _Callie will kill me for sure. _She gulped.

**Leaning forward to read the PROHIBITED MATERIALS sign a little more closely, she saw that cell phones, pagers, and all two-way radio devices were strictly forbidden. It was bad enough that she couldn't have her car! Luce clamped a sweaty hand around the cell phone in her pocket, her only connection to the outside world. When the attendant saw the look on her face, Luce received a few quick slaps on the cheek. **

Everyone glared at the book.

**"Don't swoon on me, kid, they don't pay me enough to resuscitate. Besides, you get one phone call once a week in the main lobby. "**

Luce's face paled. _Only one? _

Arriane noticed her look. "Hey, it isn't that bad, honestly."

Roland snorted. "Easy for you to say, you left for what, three years?"

**One phone call ... Once a week? But-**

**She looked down at her phone one last time and saw that she'd received two new text messages. It didn't seem possible that these would be her two last text messages. The first one was from Callie.**

_**Call immediately! Will be waiting by the phone all nite so be ready to dish. And remember the mantra I assigned you. You'll survive! BYW, for what it's worth, I think everyone's totally forgotten about ...**_

Cam whistled, lowly. "Whoops, best friend alert. Good luck with that."

She pretended to ignore him.

**In typical Callie fashion, she'd gone on so long that Luce's crap cell phone cut the message off four lines in. In a way, Luce was almost relieved. She didn't want to read about how everyone from her old school had already forgotten what had happened to her, what she'd done to land herself in this place.**

**She sighed and scrolled down to her second message. It was from her mom, who'd only just gotten the hang of texting a few weeks ago, and who surely had not known about this one-call-once-a-week thing or she would never have abandoned her daughter here. Right?**

"I sure hope not," Luce mumbled to herself.

_**Kiddo, we are always thinking of you. Be good and try to eat enough protein. We'll talk when we can. Love, M&D**_

They giggled at her mom's text. Luce felt herself blush.

"Gee, how cute," Molly noted, sarcastically. No one payed attention to her. Molly huffed and leaned back in her seat. She made sure to make a mental note that as soon as she gets out of here, she's getting another piercing.

**With a sigh, Luce realized her parents must have known. How else to explain their drawn faces when she'd waved goodbye at the school gates this morning, duffel bag in hand? At breakfast, she'd tried to joke about finally losing that appalling New England accent she'd picked up at Dover, but her parents hadn't even cracked She'd thought they were still mad at her. They never did the whole raising- their-voice thing, which meant that when Luce really messed up, they just gave her the old silent treatment. Now she understood this morning's strange demeanor: Her parents were already mourning the loss of contact with their only daughter.**

Luce sighed aloud. The others looked at her, pitying her. Even Molly dropped the glaring act, and just looked at her with a poker face. Gabbe pouted, but quickly smiled and gave her two thumbs up.

**"We're still waiting on one person, " the attendant sang. "I wonder who it is. "**

_Fuck you, Randy, _Arriane and Annabelle thought.

_Lay off her, _Daniel snapped in his mind.

"Don't worry, she's always like that," Roland said encouragingly. Luce smiled, grateful at his comment.

**Luce's attention snapped back to the Hazard Box, which was now brimming with contraband she didn't even recognize. She could feel the dark-haired boy's green eyes staring at her. She looked up and noticed that everyone was staring. Her turn. She closed her eyes and slowly opened her fingers, letting her phone slip from her grasp and land with a sad thunk on top of the heap. The sound of being all alone.**

**Todd and the fembot Gabbe **

"Great, now I'm a fembot," Gabbe said while everyone laughed. Penn cracked up. Luce smiled sheepishly.

**headed for the door without so much as a look in Luce's direction, but the third boy turned to the attendant.**

Cam winked at her again.

_What is he up to? _Luce thought.

**"I can fill her in, " he said, nodding at Luce.**

**"Not part of our deal, " the attendant replied automatically, as if she'd been expecting this dialogue. "You're a new student again-**

"Again? What does that mean?" She asked Cam.

He merely shrugged. "I left... came back after a few years."

**that means new-student restrictions. Back to square one. You don't like it, you should have thought twice before breaking parole. "**

**The boy stood motionless, expressionless, as the attendant tugged Luce-who'd stiffened at the word "parole"-toward the end of a yellowed hall.**

**"Moving on, " she said, as if nothing had just happened. "Beds. " She pointed out the west-facing window to a distant cinder-block building. Luce could see Gabbe and Todd shuffling slowly toward them, with the third boy walking slowly, as if catching up to them were the last thing on his list of things to do.**

"It probably was," Annabelle agreed. Daniel nodded his head at her, and Luce stared enviously.

**The dorm was formidable and square, a solid gray block of a building whose thick double doors gave away nothing about the possibility of life inside them. A large stone plaque stood planted in the middle of the dead lawn, and Luce remembered from the Web site the words PAULINE DORMITORY chiseled into it. It looked even uglier in the hazy morning sun than it had looked in the flat black-and-white photograph.**

They snorted at this.

**Even from this distance, Luce could see black mold covering the face of the dorm. All the windows were obstructed by rows of thick steel bars. She squinted. Was that barbed wire topping the fence around the building?**

Daniel sighed. "Yes, yes it is." She smiled, happy that she was noticed, but a frown quickly replaced it. Why would there be barbed _wire _on top of the fence?

**The attendant looked down at a chart, flipping through Luce's file. "Room sixty- three. Throw your bag in my office with the rest of them for now. You can unpack this afternoon."**

**Luce dragged her red duffel bag toward three other nondescript black trunks. Then she reached reflexively for her cell phone, where she usually keyed in things she needed to remember. But as her hand searched her empty pocket, she sighed and committed the room number to memory instead.**

**She still didn't see why she couldn't just stay with her parents; their house in Thunderbolt was less than a half hour from Sword & Cross. It had felt so good to be back home in Savannah, where, as her mom always said, even the wind blew lazily. Georgia's softer, slower pace suited Luce way more than New England ever had.**

"What did you do so bad that your parents had to ship you off here, anyway?" Arriane asked Luce.

Daniel and Cam gave her a look. "Arriane," Cam said.

Luce shrugged. "I don't know. This hasn't happened yet."

**But Sword & Cross didn't feel like Savannah. It hardly felt like anywhere at all, except the lifeless, colorless place where the court had mandated she board. She'd overheard her dad on the phone with the headmaster the other day, nodding in his befuddled biology-professor way and saying, "Yes, yes, maybe it would be best for her to be supervised all the time. No, no, we wouldn't want to interfere with your system. "**

**Clearly her father had not seen the conditions of his only daughter's supervision. This place looked like a maximum-security prison.**

**"And what about, what did you say-the reds?" Luce asked the attendant, ready to be released from the tour.**

"Be glad when you do," Molly nodded at Luce. Luce thought, _This girl isn't that bad, as long as you're on her good side. _

**"Reds, " the attendant said, pointing toward a small wired device hanging from the ceiling: a lens with a flashing red light. Luce hadn't seen it before, but as soon as the attendant pointed the first one out, she realized they were everywhere.**

**"Cameras?"**

**"Very good, " the attendant said, voice dripping condescension. "We make them obvious in order to remind you. All the time, everywhere, we're watching you. So don't screw up-that is, if you can help yourself. "**

**Every time someone talked to Luce like she was a total psychopath, she came that much closer to believing it was true.**

Everyone leaned on the edge of their seats, wanting to hear every word that Cam is saying. This is the best part of the show, some of them thought. Daniel, though, was horrified on what he would hear about Luce.

Luce was anticipating what would happen. What _had _she done so bad that she had to go to a reform school? She was like one of your typical all-As students, and she never had a bad record in her student file. It was almost impossible for a student like Luce to end up at a reform school.

**All summer, the memories had haunted her, in her dreams and in the rare moments her parents left her alone. Something had happened in that cabin, and everyone (including Luce) was dying to know exactly what. The police, the judge, the social worker had all tried to pry the truth out of her, but she was as clueless about it all as they were. **

**She and Trevor had been joking around the whole evening, chasing each other down to the row of cabins on the lake, away from the rest of the party. She'd tried to explain that it had been one of the best nights of her life, until it turned into the worst.**

Luce visibly paled at the mention of Trevor. _Trevor? _she thought. How did he get here? Trevor was one of those popular people at her school. And yes, she did have a crush on him. But how did he get in this story?

The others knew that Luce was getting scared, they knew that once the boy's name was mentioned she paled. _This must not be good, _Roland thought.

**She'd spent so much time replaying that night in her head, hearing Trevor's laugh, feeling his hands close around her waist, and trying to reconcile her gut instinct that she really was innocent. **

Daniel and Cam's faces darkened with jealousy. But then it turned to pity, as they realized that Luce must've loved this boy. And that whatever she had done had not been her fault, she was innocent.

**But now, every rule and regulation at Sword & Cross seemed to work against that notion, seemed to suggest that she was, in fact dangerous and needed to be controlled. Luce felt a firm hand on her shoulder. **

**"Look, " the attendant said. "If it makes you feel any better, you're far from the worst case here. "**

**It was the first humane gesture the attendant had made toward Luce, **

Arriane snorted. Daniel glared at her.

**and she believed that it was intended to make her feel better. But. She'd been sent here because of the suspicious death of the guy she'd been crazy about, **

_"Death?" _Luce shrieked.

The others looked as surprised as she was. Eyes bulging, mouth gaping. They stared at her, their gaze burning with such intensity. Her eyes blurred with tears, and one escaped her. _Trevor? Dead? How could this be? _Luce looked down, and covered her face in her hands. _No, _she thought, _this is impossible. _

Cam and Penn wrapped their arms around her. Daniel so much wanted to do it himself, but he stayed put, scared that she might burst into flames as soon as he touched her like she used to the last time.

When Luce's face was out of her hands, she wiped her tears away. She was left with a red face and a runny nose. Daniel nodded at Cam, who started to read.

**and still she was "far from the worst case here"? Luce wondered what else exactly they were dealing with at Sword & Cross.**

**"Okay, orientation's over, " the attendant said. "You're on your own now. Here's a map if you need to find anything else. " She gave Luce a photocopy of a crude hand-drawn map, then glanced at her watch. "You've got an hour before your first class, but my soaps come on in five, so"-she waved her hand at Luce-"make yourself scarce. And don't forget, " she said, pointing up at the cameras one last time. "The reds are watching you."**

Arriane talks, trying to relieve the tension. "Psh," she rolls her eyes. "Oooh, the reds are watching you!"  
Everyone laughs. Luce smiles.

**Before Luce could reply, a skinny, dark-haired girl appeared in front of her, wagging her long fingers in Luce's face.**

**"Ooooooh, " the girl taunted in a ghost-story-telling voice, dancing around Luce in a circle. "The reds are watching youuuu. "**

Everyone laughed, including Arriane. She smirked at every single one of them. "I told you," she said, satisfied.

**"Get out of here, Arriane, before I have you lobotomized," the attendant said, **

"Oooh, Arriane's going to be lobotomized," Roland mocked, and Arriane smacked his arm. They both had grins on their faces.

**though it was clear from her first brief but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for the crazy girl.**

"Ew!" Arriane shrieked.

**It was also clear that Arriane did not reciprocate the love. She mimed a jerking-off motion at the attendant, then stared at Luce, daring her to be offended.**

**"And just for that, " the attendant said, jotting a furious note in her book, "you've earned yourself the task of showing Little Miss Sunshine around today. "**

**She pointed at Luce, who looked anything but sunny in her black jeans, black boots, and black top. Under the "Dress Code" section, the Sword & Cross Web site had cheerily maintained that as long as the students were on good behavior, they were free to dress as they pleased, with just two small stipulations: style must be modest and color must be black. Some freedom.**

**The too-big mock turtleneck Luce's mom had forced on her this morning did nothing for her curves, and even her best feature was gone: Her thick black hair, which used to hang down to her waist, had been almost completely shorn off. **

The others smiled sadly at Luce. Gabbe pouted. "But I _loved _your hair," she whined.

_Loved my hair? Has she seen it before? _Luce wondered. She was weirded out at Gabbe's comment. She looked at Daniel, and he shook his head again. But before Luce could say anything, Cam started to read.

**The cabin fire had left her scalp singed and her hairline patchy, so after the long, silent ride home from Dover, Mom had planted Luce in the bathtub, brought out Dad's electric razor, and wordlessly shaved her head. Over the summer, her hair had grown out a little, just enough so that her once- enviable waves now hovered in awkward twists just below her ears.**

There was silence. "I like her hair, too," Cam said, touching the perfect waves of Luce's hair. She smiled at the contact.

**Arriane sized her up, tapping one finger against her pale lips. "Perfect, " she said, stepping forward to loop her arm through Luce's. "I was just thinking I could really use a new slave. "**

**The door to the lobby swung open and in walked the tall kid with green eyes. He shook his head and said to Luce, "This place isn't afraid to do a strip search. So if you're packing any other hazards"-he raised an eyebrow and dumped a handful of unrecognizables in the box-"save yourself the trouble. "**

Luce smacked Cam, knowing well that it was him talking to her in the book. "Badass," she said to him, and he laughed.

**Behind Luce, Arriane laughed under her breath. The boy's head shot up, and when his eyes registered Arriane, he opened his mouth, then closed it, like he was unsure how to proceed.**

**"Arriane, " he said evenly.**

**"Cam, " she returned.**

**"You know him?" Luce whispered, wondering whether there were the same kinds of cliques in reform schools as there were in prep schools like Dover.**

**"Don't remind me, " Arriane said, dragging Luce out the door into the gray and swampy morning.**

"Ouch, Arriane," Cam said, touching the skin over his heart.

Arriane swatted at him. "Get on with it!" she said playfully.

**The back of the main building let out onto a chipped sidewalk bordering a messy field. The grass was so overgrown, it looked more like a vacant lot than a school commons, but a faded scoreboard and a small stack of wooden bleachers argued otherwise.**

**Beyond the commons lay four severe-looking buildings: the cinder-block dormitory on the far left, a huge old ugly church**

The others cringed at the word. Luce and Penn wondered why.

**on the far right, and two other expansive structures in between that Luce imagined were the classrooms.**

**This was it. Her whole world was reduced to the sorry sight before her eyes.**

**Arriane immediately veered right off the path and led Luce to the field, sitting her down on top of one of the waterlogged wooden bleachers.**

**The corresponding setup at Dover had screamed Ivy League jock-in-training, so Luce had always avoided hanging out there. But this empty field, with its rusted, warped goals, told a very different story. One that wasn't as easy for Luce to figure out. Three turkey vultures swooped overhead, and a dismal wind whipped through the bare branches of the oak trees. Luce ducked her chin down into her mock turtleneck.**

"Ivy League jock-in-training?" Daniel said, raising his eyebrows at her.

Luce smiled. "I'll explain later."

**"Soooo, " Arriane said. **

**"Now you've met Randy." **

**"I thought his name was Cam. "**

Everyone laughed at her. Even Cam. And his laugh boomed the loudest of them all, bouncing off the walls of the white room.

**"We're not talking about him, " Arriane said quickly. **

Cam raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like you're looking for away to get rid of me, Ari."

Arriane rolled her eyes. "Who wouldn't?"

**"I mean she-man in there."**

**Arriane jerked her head toward the office where they'd left the attendant in front of the TV. "Whaddya think-dude or chick?"**

**"Uh, chick?" Luce said tentatively. "Is this a test?"**

**Arriane cracked a smile. "The first of many. And you passed. At least, I think you passed. The gender of most of the faculty here is an ongoing, schoolwide debate. Don't worry, you'll get into it."**

_You're joking. Right? _Luce thought, making her groan inside.

**Luce thought Arriane was making a joke-in which case, cool. But this was all such a huge change from Dover. At her old school, the green-tie-wearing, pomaded future senators had practically oozed through the halls in the genteel hush that money seemed to lay over everything.**

"Well that's stupid," Molly remarked. Luce smiled at her, a smile that she did not return.

**More often than not, the other Dover kids gave Luce a don't-smudge-the-white-walls-with-your-fingerprints side ways glance. She tried to imagine Arriane there: lazing on the bleachers, making a loud, crude joke in her peppery voice. Luce tried to imagine what Callie might think of Arriane. There'd been no one like her at Dover.**

"Hell yeah baby," Annabelle said, "This chick is one of a kind!"

**"Okay, spill it, " Arriane ordered. Plopping down on the top bleacher and motioning for Luce to join her, she said, "What'd ya do to get in here?"**

**Arriane's tone was playful, but suddenly Luce had to sit down. It was ridiculous, but she'd half expected to get through her first day of school without the past creeping up and robbing her of her thin faade of calm. Of course people here were going to want to know. **

**She could feel the blood thrumming at her temples. It happened whenever she tried to think back-really think back-to that night. She'd never stop feeling guilty about what had happened to Trevor, but she also tried really hard not to get mired down in the shadows, which by now were the only things she could remember about the accident. Those dark, indefinable things that she could never tell anyone about.**

Everyone was silent. The angels were staring at each other with such intensity, that Penn and Luce were _dying _to find out what was it they were silently communicating about. Then suddenly, all their gazes flitted to Luce.

Daniel spoke first. "What shadows?" He asked slowly, as if testing if she's crazy or not.

"Like, moving shadows. They only go at night, or in dark and deserted places," Luce said. She shrugged. What was the big deal? If her psychiatrist before didn't see them, why would they care?

Daniel began whispering to Gabbe and Arriane. Roland huddled over Arriane to hear what they were talking about. Luce could barely hear them, but she thought Daniel had said, "First... lifetime... shadows... Announcers...?"

Cam touched her shoulder. He looked worried as he stared at Luce. "You really can see them?" He said to her.

Luce nodded. "I swear."

Cam pursed his lips, then cleared his throat. She locked eyes with her other seatmate, Penn, and saw that she was equally confused as she was. Luce tried to smile, but was certain that she was failing miserably.

Cam started reading.

**Scratch that-she'd started to tell Trevor about the peculiar presence she'd felt that night, about the twisting shapes hanging over their heads, threatening to mar their perfect evening. Of course, by then it was already too late. Trevor was gone, his body burned beyond recognition, **

Daniel stiffened at Cam's words. What had he said that made him uncomfortable? Had he said... _burned_?

No one talked, so Cam continued.

**and Luce was ... Was she ... Guilty?**

_No, _Daniel thought, _It can't be. It's not her fault. She can't be guilty. _

**No one knew about the murky shapes she sometimes saw in the darkness. They'd always come to her. They'd come and gone for so long that Luce couldn't even remember the first time she'd seen them. But she could remember the first time she realized that the shadows didn't come for everyone-or actually, anyone but her.**

**When she was seven, her family had been on vacation in Hilton Head and her parents had taken her on a boat trip. It was just about sunset when the shadows started rolling in over the water, and she'd turned to her father and said, "What do you do when they come, Dad? Why aren't you afraid of the monsters?"**

**There were no monsters, her parents assured her, but Luce's repeated insistence on the presence of something wobbly and dark had gotten her several appointments with the family eye doctor, and then glasses, and then appointments with the ear doctor after she made the mistake of describing the hoarse whooshing noise that the shadows sometimes made-and then therapy, and then more therapy, and finally the prescription for anti-psychotic medication.**

_Maybe they went away for a while...? _Roland hoped.

**But nothing ever made them go away.**

_Who am I kidding, to hope like that... _Roland remarked snidely at himself.

**By the time she was fourteen, Luce refused to take her meds. That was when they found Dr. Sanford, and the Dover School nearby. They flew to New Hampshire, and her father drove their rental car up a long, curved driveway to a hilltop mansion called Shady Hollows. They planted Luce in front of a man in a lab coat and asked her if she still saw her "visions. " Her parents' palms were sweating as they gripped her hands, brows furrowed with the fear that there was something terribly wrong with their daughter.**

**No one came out and said that if she didn't tell Dr. Sanford what they all wanted her to say, she might be seeing a whole lot more of Shady Hollows. When she lied and acted normal, she was allowed to enroll at Dover, and only had to visit Dr. Sanford twice a month.**

Everyone was silent. They were all looking at Luce, then at Cam, waiting for him to continue reading. When he didn't they just stared at each other. Until Molly spoke.

"Well, all of this is certainly new," she said.

The others-except Penn, who looked clearly cast out as she was- nodded at her statement. Even Gabbe, who looked so disgusted at Molly's piercings at the beginning, shook her head stiffly.

**Luce had been permitted to stop taking the horrible pills as soon as she started pretending she didn't see the shadows anymore. But she still had no control over when they might appear. All she knew was that the mental catalog of places where they'd come for her in the past-dense forests, murky waters-became the places she avoided at all costs. All she knew was that when the shadows came, they were usually accompanied by a cold chill under her skin, a sickening feeling unlike anything else.**

"I don't think that's the last time you'll see them," Cam murmured under his breath. He was tense and stiff, like Daniel, who was clutching his left hand like a lifeline. But Cam could see Daniel's fingernails digging into his skin. Yeouch.

**Luce straddled one of the bleachers and gripped her temples between her thumbs and middle fingers. If she was going to make it through today, she had to push her past to the recesses of her mind. She couldn't stand probing the memory of that night by herself, so there was no way she could air all the gruesome details to some weird, maniacal stranger.**

_This hasn't even happened to me yet and I feel like I can't stand the memory of that night, _Luce thought to herself. Tears were threatning to fall at the edge of her eyes, but she kept her cool because she didn't want special attention from anybody. Most of all, she kept her cool because she didn't want Daniel-or Cam-to see her cry.

**Instead of answering, she watched Arriane, who was lying back on the bleachers, sporting a pair of enormous black sunglasses that covered the better part of her face. It was hard to tell, but she must have been staring at Luce, too, because after a second, she shot up from the bleachers and grinned.**

"Uh oh," Roland said in a sing-songy voice, "Ari has another crazy idea."

She smacked him. "Not as crazy as yours, showing up at S&C before I do."

He smirked at her, and she laughed.

**"Cut my hair like yours, " she said.**

**"What?" Luce gasped. "Your hair is beautiful. "**

**It was true: Arriane had the long, thick locks that Luce so desperately missed. Her loose black curls sparkled in the sunlight, giving off just a tinge of red. Luce tucked her hair behind her ears, even though it still wasn't long enough to do anything but flop back down in front of them.**

"*cough* Jealousy alert *cough*" Annabelle said, while smirking at Luce, who blushed. She _would _miss her hair if it was cut short.

Daniel, however, did not take this playfully. "Lay off her," he snapped at Annabelle.

She just rolled her eyes at him. "Jeez, Daniel, I'm just kidding."

Cam started reading before Daniel lost it.

**"Beautiful schmootiful, " Arriane said. "Yours is sexy, edgy. And I want it. "**

**"Oh, um, okay, " Luce said. Was that a compliment? She didn't know if she was supposed to be flattered or unnerved by the way Arriane assumed she could have whatever she wanted, even if what she wanted belonged to someone else. **

Molly rolled her eyes. "Yes, that _is _a compliment."

**"Where are we going to get-"**

**"Ta-da!" Arriane reached into her bag and pulled out the pink Swiss Army knife Gabbe had tossed into the Hazard Box. "What?" she said, seeing Luce's reaction. "I always bring my sticky fingers on new-student drop-off days. The idea alone gets me through the dog days of Sword & Cross internment ... Er ... Summer camp. "**

_"You spend summer here?" _Luce half shrieked, and half squeaked.

The others decided that it was best not to answer that.

**"You spent the whole summer ... Here?" Luce winced.**

That earned a laugh from them. A big one.

**"Ha! Spoken like a true newbie. You're probably expecting a spring break." Shetossed Luce the Swiss Army knife. "We don't get to leave this hellhole. Ever. Now cut. "**

Daniel winced. "You're too harsh on her." He nodded in Luce's direction.

**"What about the reds?" Luce asked, glancing around with the knife in her hand. There were bound to be cameras somewhere out here.**

**Arriane shook her head. "I refuse to associate with pansies. Can you handle it or not?"**

Luce crossed her arms over her chest mockingly. "How _dare _you call me a pansy!" She says in a British accent. Everyone laughs at her, and she smiles so big it could reach the other side of her face.

**Luce nodded. "And don't tell me you've never cut hair before. " Arriane grabbed the Swiss Army knife back from Luce, pulled out the scissor tool, and handed it back. "Not another word until you tell me how fantastic I look. "**

Cam snorted. "Or how you _wish _how fantastic you look," he said, earning a glare from Arriane.

**In the "salon" of her parents' bathtub, Luce's mother had tugged the remains of her long hair into a messy pony-tail before lopping the whole thing off. Luce was sure there had to be a more strategic method of cutting hair, but as a lifelong haircut avoider, the chopped-off pony was about all she knew. **

**She gathered Arriane's hair in her hands, wrapped an elastic band from her wrist around it, held the small scissors firmly, and began to hack.**

**The ponytail fell to her feet and Arriane gasped and whipped around. She picked it up and held it to the sun. Luce's heart constricted at the sight. She still agonized over her own lost hair, and all the other losses it symbolized. But Arriane just let a thin smile spread across her lips. She ran her fingers through the ponytail once, then dropped it into her bag.**

Gabbe wrinkled her nose. "Why would you want to keep that?" She seems disgusted by the idea.

Arriane smirked at her impression. "To remind myself that I got a haircut by no other than the extraordinary Lucinda Price!" She says my name like the announcers in a boxing rink. I mean, you call it a rink... Right?

**"Awesome, " she said. "Keep going. "**

**"Arriane, " Luce whispered before she could stop herself. "Your neck. It's all-"**

**"Scarred?" Arriane finished. "You can say it. "**

**The skin on Arriane's neck, from the back of her left ear all the way down to her collarbone, was jagged and marbled and shiny. Luce's mind went to Trevor-to those awful pictures. Even her own parents wouldn't look at her after they saw them. She was having a hard time looking at Arriane now.**

"What happened to it?" Luce asked Arriane, horrified. Penn looked at her, too, interested.

_That must be some intense scar, for Luce to describe it like that, _Penn thought.

Arriane pursed her lips. "I don't want to talk about it now," she said, then smiled, forgetting the scenario.

**Arriane grabbed Luce's hand and pressed it to the skin. It was hot and cold at the same time. It was smooth and rough. "I'm not afraid of it, " Arriane said. "Are you?"**

**"No, " Luce said, though she wished Arriane would take her hand away so Luce could take hers away, too. Her stomach churned as she wondered whether this was how Trevor's skin would have felt.**

**"Are you afraid of who you really are, Luce?"**

**"No, " Luce said again quickly. It must be so obvious that she was lying. She closed her eyes. All she wanted from Sword & Cross was a fresh start, a place where people didn't look at her the way Arriane was looking at her right now. At the school's gates that morning, when her father had whispered the Price family motto in her ear-"Prices never crash"-**

Molly snorted. "Well that's corny," she said. Luce-and Daniel, who always seemed to back her up for some reason. Not that she was complaining, anyway-glared at her.

**it had felt possible, but already Luce felt so run down and exposed. She tugged her hand away. "So how'd it happen?" she asked, looking down. **

**"Remember how I didn't press you when you clammed up about what you did to get here?" Arriane asked, raising her eyebrows.**

**Luce nodded.**

**Arriane gestured to the scissors. "Touch it up in the back, okay? Make me look real pretty. Make me look like you." Even with the same exact cut, Arriane would still only look like a very undernourished version of Luce. While Luce attempted to even out the first haircut she'd ever given, Arriane delved into the complexities of life at Sword & Cross.**

**"That cell block over there is Augustine. It's where we have our so-called Social events on Wednesday nights. And all of our classes, " she said, pointing at a building the color of yellowed teeth, two buildings to the right of the dorm. It looked like it had been designed by the same sadist who'd done Pauline. It was dismally square, dismally fortresslike, fortified by the same barbed wire and barred windows. An unnatural-looking gray mist cloaked the walls like moss, making it impossible to see whether anyone was over there.**

"It sounds so terrifying," Luce said with a shudder. Daniel had to resist wrapping his arms around her.

"That's not even half of it," he says while nodding. The others smile at their communication, and so does Luce.

**"Fair warning, " Arriane continued. "You're going to hate the classes here. You wouldn't be human if you didn't. "**

"That's the understatement of the millenia!" Roland exclaimed.

**"Why? What's so bad about them?" Luce asked. Maybe Arriane just didn't like school in general. With her black nail polish, black eyeliner, and the black bag that only seemed big enough to hold her new Swiss Army knife, she didn't exactly look bookish.**

"I'll pretend not to be offended," Arriane remarked, dryly.

**"The classes here are soulless, " Arriane said. "Worse, they'll strip you of your soul. Of the eighty kids in this place, I'd say we've only got about three remaining souls. " She glanced up. "Unspoken for, anyway ... "**

**That didn't sound promising, but Luce was hung up on another part of Arriane's answer. "Wait, there are only eighty kids in this whole school?" The summer before she went to Dover, Luce had pored over the thick Prospective Students handbook, memorizing all the statistics. But everything she'd learned so far about Sword & Cross had surprised her, making her realize that she was coming into reform school completely unprepared.**

"No one is really prepared, anyway," from beside her, Penn had said. She smiled at Luce, who returned the smile immediately.

**Arriane nodded, making Luce accidentally snip off a chunk of hair she'd meant to leave. Whoops. Hopefully Arriane wouldn't notice-or maybe she'd just think it was edgy.**

Everyone laughed at that. Even Arriane.

**"Eight classes, ten kids a pop. You get to know everybody's crap pret-ty quickly," Arriane said. "And vice versa. "**

**"I guess so, " Luce agreed, biting her lip. Arriane was joking, but Luce wondered whether she'd be sitting here with that cool smirk in her pastel blue eyes if she knew the exact nature of Luce's backstory. The longer Luce could keep her past under wraps, the better off she'd be.**

**"And you'll want to steer clear of the hard cases. "**

**"Hard cases?"**

**"The kids with the wristband tracking devices, " Arriane said. "About a third of the student body. "**

"Why do they have those?" Luce asked.

Again, Penn answered her question. "The school-a.k.a, Randy-want those people with 'hard cases' to be tracked, every move they make is being tracked. One wrong move and bam! They get shocked or something." Penn shrugs. "It depends."

**"And they're the ones who-"**

**"You don't want to mess with. Trust me. " "Well, what'd they do?" Luce asked.**

**As much as Luce wanted to keep her own story a secret, she didn't like the way Arriane was treating her like some sort of ingnue. **

"Ouch, Luce," Arriane said as Luce smiled guiltily.

**Whatever those kids had done couldn't be much worse than what everyone told her she had done. Or could it? After all, she knew next to nothing about these people and this place. The possibilities stirred up a cold gray fear in the pit of her stomach.**

**"Oh, you know, " Arriane drawled. "Aided and abetted terrorist acts. Chopped up their parents and roasted them on a spit. " She turned around to wink at Luce.**

**"Shut up, " Luce said.**

They all giggled.

**"I'm serious. Those psychos are under much tighter restrictions than the rest of the screwups here. We call them the shackled. "**

Penn cackled at the name which made all of them laugh again.

**Luce laughed at Arriane's dramatic tone. **

**"Your haircut's done, " she said, running her hands through Arriane's hair to fluff it up a little. It actually looked really cool.**

**"Sweet, " Arriane said. She turned to face Luce. When she ran her fingers through her hair, the sleeves of her black sweater fell back on her forearms and Luce caught a glimpse of a black wristband, dotted with rows of silver studs, and, on the other wrist, another band that looked more ... Mechanical. Arriane caught her looking and raised her eyebrows devilishly.**

**"Told ya, " she said. "Total effing psychos." **

"You're right about that," Roland says.

**She grinned. "Come on, I'll give you the rest of the tour."**

**Luce didn't have much choice. She scrambled down the bleachers after Arriane, ducking when one of the turkey vultures swooped dangerously low. Arriane, who didn't seem to notice, pointed at a lichen-swathed church at the far right of the commons.**

**"Over here, you'll find our state-of-the-art gymnasium, " she said, assuming a nasal tour guide tone of voice. "Yes, yes, to the untrained eye it looks like a church. It used to be. We're kind of in an architectural hand-me-down Hell here at Sword & Cross. A few years ago, some calisthenic-crazed shrink showed up ranting about overmedicated teens ruining society. He donated a shit- ton of money so they'd convert it into a gym. Now the powers that be think we can work out our `frustrations' in a `more natural and productive way. '"**

"That's stupid," Luce said. Everyone looked at her.

**Luce groaned. She had always loathed gym class.**

**"Girl after my very own heart, " Arriane commiserated, "Coach Diante is ee-vil. "**

**As Luce jogged to keep up, she took in the rest of the grounds. The Dover quad had been so well kept, all manicured and dotted with evenly spaced, carefully pruned trees. Sword & Cross looked like it had been plopped down and abandoned in the middle of a swamp. **

Everyone laughed at Luce's book thoughts.

**Weeping willows dangled to the ground, kudzu grew along the walls in sheets, and every third step they took squished. And it wasn't just the way the place looked. Every humid breath Luce took stuck in her lungs. Just breathing at Sword & Cross made her feel like she was sinking into quicksand.**

"Oh," Molly laughed, "You are. Slowly and slowly, until it officially kills you off from this world," she said, saying her sentence in a cryptic way while narrowing her eyes. Luce thought that she looked odd, and it was a strange thing for her to say.

"Don't scare her," Cam says, scowling.

Daniel looks at Luce. "Don't listen to Molly," he said in a gentle tone. Her eyes soften involuntarily, and he looks away. She can't help but feel disappointed, though she doesn't know why.

**"Apparently the architects got in a huge standoff over how to retrofit the style of the old military academy buildings. The upshot is we ended up with half penitentiary, half medieval torture zone. And no gardener," Arriane said, kicking some slime off her combat boots. "Gross. Oh, and there's the cemetery. "**

**Luce followed Arriane's pointing finger to the far left side of the quad, just past the dormitory. An even thicker cloak of mist hung over the walled-off portion of land. It was bordered on three sides by a thick forest of oaks. She couldn't see into the cemetery, which seemed almost to sink below the surface of the ground, but she could smell the rot and hear the chorus of cicadas buzzing in the trees. **

**For a second, she thought she saw the dark swish of the shadows-but she blinked and they were gone.**

Everyone was silent. The others were looking at each other _again, _and Luce couldn't help but feel annoyed... and left out. She glanced at Penn, and whispered to her, "Do you have any idea what they're talking about?"

"No," Penn whispered back.

"Me, too, but it's getting annoying."

Penn simply nodded her head when Cam went back to reading.

**"That's a cemetery?"**

**"Yep. This used to be a military academy, way back in the Civil War days. So that's where they buried all their dead. It's creepy as all get-out. And lawd, " Arriane said, piling on a fake southern accent, "it stinks to high Heaven. " Then she winked at Luce. "We hang out there a lot. "**

**Luce looked at Arriane to see if she was kidding. Arriane just shrugged. "Okay, it was only once. And it was only after a really big pharmapalooza. " Now, that was a word Luce recognized.**

**"Aha!" Arriane laughed. "I just saw a light go on up there. So somebody is home.**

They all laughed.

**Well, Luce, my dear, you may have gone to boarding school parties, but you've never seen a throw-down like reform school kids do it."**

**"What's the difference?" Luce asked, trying to skirt the fact that she'd never actually been to a big party at Dover.**

_"Never?" _Arriane yelled.

"Nope," Luce said, looking down.

"Well, Luce, I'll teach you _all _the ways to rock and roll." Arriane winks at her. "Roland, over here, is the master party rocker."

He, too, winks at Luce, "I'm one of a kind, baby."

**"You'll see. " Arriane paused and turned to Luce. "You'll come over tonight and hang out, okay?" She surprised Luce by taking her hand. "Promise?"**

**"But I thought you said I should stay away from the hard cases, " Luce joked.**

**"Rule number two-don't listen to me!" Arriane laughed, shaking her head. "I'm certifiably insane!"**

**She started jogging again and Luce trailed after her.**

**"Wait, what was rule number one?"**

"Yeah, genius, you forgot to mention," Molly said. Arriane glared at her once more.

**"Keep up!" **

**As they came around the corner of the cinder-block classrooms, Arriane skidded to a halt. "Affect cool, " she said.**

**"Cool, " Luce repeated.**

**All the other students seemed to be clustered around the kudzu-strangled trees outside Augustine. No one looked exactly happy to be hanging out, but no one looked ready to go inside yet, either.**

**There hadn't been much of a dress code at Dover, so Luce wasn't used to the uniformity it gave a student body. Then again, even though every kid here was wearing the same black jeans, black mock-turtleneck T-shirt, and black sweater tied over the shoulders or around the waist, there were still substantial differences in the way they pulled it off.**

**A group of tattooed girls standing in a crossed-armed circle wore bangle bracelets up to their elbows. **

"No offense to them, but that's one of the lamest trends I've _ever _seen," Gabbe says, rolling her eyes. "And believe me, I've seen _tons _of trends." No one can argue that Gabbe has the best fashion taste in the group, after seeing her cool outfit, plus the manicured nails.

"Who were those girls, anyway?"

Cam patted Luce's wrist. "Just the usual highschool clique."

**The black bandanas in their hair reminded Luce of a film she'd once seen about motorcycle-gang girls. **

Everyone burst out laughing at that, even Penn. She turned red from humiliation, and just wanted to sink in her seat.

**She'd rented it because she'd thought: What could be cooler than an all-girls motorcycle gang? Now Luce's eyes locked with those of one of the girls across the lawn. The sideways squint of the girl's darkly lined cat-eyes made Luce quickly shift the direction of her gaze.**

"Oh girl," Arriane said in between wheezes, "You don't need to be 'fraid! I'd take one of 'em any time!"

They rolled their eyes at her.

**A guy and a girl who were holding hands had sewn sequins in the shape of skulls and crossbones on the back of their black sweaters. Every few seconds, one of them would pull the other in for a kiss on the temple, on the earlobe, on the eye.**

**When they looped their arms around each other, Luce could see that each wore the blinking wristband tracking device. They looked a little rough, but it was obvious how much in love they were. Every time she saw their tongue rings flashing, Luce felt a lonely pinch inside her chest.**

Daniel and Cam's face fell at her words. Everyone's quickly followed. They all felt Luce's pain, and though every angel in the group knew that she would not remember them, they all remembered her clearly and would hate to see her suffer. Especially from heartbreak.

**Behind the lovers, a cluster of blond boys stood pressed against the wall. Each of them wore his sweater, despite the heat. And they all had on white oxford shirts underneath, the collars starched straight up. Their black pants hit the vamps of their polished dress shoes perfectly. Of all the students on the quad, these boys seemed to Luce to be the closest thing to Doverites. But a closer look quickly set them apart from boys she used to know. Boys like Trevor.**

Luce felt a pang in her chest, thinking about Trevor. Thinking about him dying.

**Just standing in a group, these guys radiated a specific kind of toughness. It was right there in the look in their eyes. It was hard to explain, but it suddenly struck Luce that just like her, everyone at this school had a past. Everyone here probably had secrets they wouldn't want to share. But she couldn't figure out whether this realization made her feel more or less isolated.**

"Well, it should make you feel more comfortable in fitting in," Daniel said with a smile. He hated to see Luce suffer, or at least feel the smallest amount of pain. He would always want the best for her.

"Says Dr. Phil," Cam remarked, teasingly.

Daniel stuck his tongue out, like a little boy, and Luce couldn't help but giggle. They looked at her in a funny way, and she blushed.

**Arriane noticed Luce's eyes running over the rest of the kids.**

**"We all do what we can to make it through the day, " she said, shrugging. "But in case you hadn't observed the low-hanging vultures, this place pretty much reeks of death." She took a seat on a bench under a weeping willow and patted the spot next to her for Luce.**

**Luce wiped away a mound of wet, decaying leaves, but just before she sat down, she noticed another dress code violation.**

**A very attractive dress code violation.**

"Daniel Grigori!" Arriane hooted. Roland's voice soon followed. "Daniel Grigori!" both of them yelled. Daniel was blushing, and Cam was glaring at them.

Annabelle joined in. "Oooh, I see little Cam is _jealous._" She smirked at him, and in a sing-songy voice, she said, "Cam is jealous, Cam is jealous..."

Cam shook with anger and embarassment. Luce could tell he was trying to keep his cool, but his eyes had a hint of anger flashing by. Beside Luce, Penn laughs at him. And then suddenly they're both laughing and Daniel's blushing and the others are teasing and Cam is raging.

Cam starts reading the book, just to take the attention off him. _His ego must be so bruised right now, _Luce thinks.

**He wore a bright red scarf around his neck. It was far from cold outside, but he had on a black leather motorcycle jacket over his black sweater, too. Maybe it was because his was the only spot of color on the quad, but he was all that Luce could look at. In fact, everything else so paled in comparison that, for one long moment, Luce forgot where she was.**

**She took in his deep golden hair and matching tan. His high cheekbones, the dark sunglasses that covered his eyes, the soft shape of his lips. In all the movies Luce had seen, and in all the books she'd read, the love interest was mind-blowingly good-looking-except for that one little flaw. The chipped tooth, the charming cowlick, the beauty mark on his left cheek. She knew why-if the hero was too unblemished, he'd risk being unapproachable. But approachable or not, Luce had always had a weakness for the sublimely gorgeous. Like this guy.**

"Daniel Grigori!" Arriane and Roland howled again, then double over in laughter. This time, though, Cam totally lost it.

"Shut _up, _Arriane!"

Both Arriane and Roland were still laughing when Cam read again, raising his voice slightly.

**He leaned up against the building with his arms crossed lightly over his chest. And for a split second, Luce saw a flashing image of herself folded into those arms. She shook her head, but the vision stayed so clear that she almost took off toward him.**

**No. That was crazy. Right? Even at a school full of crazies, **

"I'll choose not to be offended by that," Daniel winked. Luce blushed more than she ever had before.

**Luce was well aware that this instinct was insane. She didn't even know him. He was talking to a shorter kid **

"Great, I'm the short kid," Roland mutters, after stopping himself from laughing.

**with dreads and a toothy smile. Both of them were laughing hard and genuinely-in a way that made Luce strangely jealous. She tried to think back and remember how long it had been since she'd laughed, really laughed, like that.**

**"That's Daniel Grigori, " Arriane said, leaning in and reading her mind. "I can tell he's attracted somebody's attention. "**

**"Understatement, " Luce agreed, embarrassed when she realized how she must have looked to Arriane.**

"Suuuuuurely is!" Arriane winked at Luce.

**"Yeah, well, if you like that sort of thing. "**

**"What's not to like?" Luce said, unable to stop the words from tumbling out.**

Arriane winked again, and so did Roland. Cam clutched the book tighter.

**"His friend there is Roland, " Arriane said, nodding in the dreadlocked kid's direction. **

"Kid?" Roland said in a flat tone.

Luce smiled. "Sorry."

**"He's cool. The kind of guy who can get his hands on things, ya know?" **

**Not really, Luce thought, biting her lip. "What kinds of things?"**

**Arriane shrugged, using her poached Swiss Army knife to saw off a fraying strand from a rip in her black jeans. "Just things. Ask-and-you-shall-receive kind of stuff."**

**"What about Daniel?" Luce asked. "What's his story?"**

**"Oh, she doesn't give up." **

Luce and Daniel blushed at this.

**Arriane laughed, then cleared her throat. "No one really knows, " she said. "He holds pretty tight to his mystery man persona. Could just be your typical reform school asshole. "**

"Totally," Arriane said while smirking at Daniel. Surprisingly, he just laughed it off.

"Yeah, especially to you, Arriane," he said, this time smirking at her. She rolled his eyes at him.

"Your humor is as dry as your ass, Daniel," she sneered, playfully. He looked embarassed this time.

**"I'm no stranger to assholes, " Luce said, though as soon as the words came out, she wished she could take them back. After what had happened to Trevor-whatever had happened-she was the last person who should be making character judgments. But more than that, the rare time she made even the smallest reference to that night, the shifting black canopy of the shadows came back to her, almost like she was right back at the lake. She glanced again at Daniel. He took his glasses off and slid them inside his jacket, then turned to look at her.**

Luce's heart felt like it was going to soar. In this alternate universe,-or future, as Roland called it-this was the time when Daniel was going to first meet her. Deep down inside, Luce had been hoping for a romantic meeting. Like your typical movie scene. Boy bumps into girl, love at first sight, boy ends up saving the girl, and he's her hero. Forever. _Now that kind of scene will be the death of me, _Luce thought.

**His gaze caught hers, and Luce watched as his eyes widened and then quickly narrowed in what looked like surprise. But no-it was more than that. When Daniel's eyes held hers, her breath caught in her throat. She recognized him from somewhere.**

The angels gasped. This was another moment that they've been anticipating. Every single one of them-especially Daniel-clung to Cam's words.

**But she would have remembered meeting someone like him. She would have remembered feeling as absolutely shaken up as she did right now.**

**She realized they were still locking eyes when Daniel flashed her a smile. A jet of warmth shot through her and she had to grip the bench for support. She felt her lips pull up in a smile back at him, but then he raised his hand in the air.**

**And flipped her off.**

Luce gasped and hung her head low. Her fairytale imagination was nothing but a dream. Her heart feels like it's crushed into a thousand pieces now.

Arriane gasps, too, and yells. "What the _hell _Daniel! What is your _problem?_" She continues to yell at him, but her shrill voice is no match to Cam's boomy ones.

"How dare you!" Cam yells at him. "You can't treat her that way. I thought you l-!"

Cam never got to finish his sentence. Roland leaped up and held him back, all the while covering his mouth so that he won't finish his line of obscenities. For a moment, Luce is glad, but then she is eager to find out what Cam was about to say. Didn't it start with the letter 'l'? Was he about to say 'love'?

No. It can't be. It was wrong of her to hope, and she won't hope again.

She could feel all eyes on her, but she just looks down. Beside her, she could hear Roland whispering in Cam's ears. And a moment later, Cam starts reading again.

**Luce gasped and dropped her eyes.**

**"What?" Arriane asked, oblivious to what had just gone down. "Never mind, " she said. "We don't have time. I sense the bell."**

**The bell rang as if on cue, **

Everyone groans. "Arriane!" Annabelle calls out.

**and the whole student body started the slow shuffle into the building. Arriane was tugging on Luce's hand and spouting off directions about where to meet her next and when. But Luce was still reeling from being flipped the bird by such a perfect stranger. Her momentary delirium over Daniel had vanished, and now the only thing she wanted to know was: What was that guy's problem? Just before she ducked into her first class, she dared to glance back. His face was blank, but there was no mistaking it-he was watching her go.**

Cam scowls at Daniel, as he hands Molly the book, because it's her turn to read next. She scowls at him as Cam says, "You're such a dick, Daniel."

Daniel rolls his eyes, probably thinking that Cam is a tad bit immature.


	4. Fit To Be Tied

Here's the chapter. Read on. Don't forget to review!

And guys, I know how Annabelle's not a student at S&C, and some of you are probably wondering how she got this info. Well, Arriane's supposedly her sister right? So yeah, Ari tells her stuff about S&C.

Again, don't forget to review!

xx

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen, it's too amazing to be true.**

* * *

Molly gives everyone a terrifying scowl, before reading the book.

_Here goes nothing, _Luce thought.

**TWO**, Molly said. ** FIT TO BE TIED.**

**Luce had a piece of paper with her schedule printed on it, a half-empty notebook she'd started to fill at Dover in her Advanced European History class last year, **

"Advanced?" Molly snickered.

"Yeah, and what's wrong with that?" Cam said. He and Daniel glowered at her.

Molly didn't look bothered by their attempt of scaring her. "Nothing," she said, smirking.

**two number two pencils, her favorite eraser, and the sudden bad feeling that Arriane might have been right about the classes at Sword & Cross.**

"Oh honey," Gabbe said, "She _is _right."

**The teacher had yet to materialize, the flimsy desks were arranged in haphazard rows, and the supply closet was barricaded with stacks of dusty boxes piled in front of it. What was worse, none of the other kids seemed to notice the disarray. In fact, none of the other kids seemed to notice that they were in a classroom at all. They all stood clustered near the windows, taking one last drag of a cigarette here, repositioning the extra-large safety pins on their T-shirts there. **

"That's how it is there," Roland said with a shrug. Arriane nodded her head in agreement.

**Only Todd was seated at an actual desk, carving something intricate onto its surface with his pen.**

"Nerd," Molly said.

**But the other new students seemed to have already found their places among the crowd. Cam had the preppy Dover-looking guys in a tight cluster around him. They must have been friends when he was enrolled at Sword & Cross the first time. **

"Yeah. Jean, Nathan, Josh, Xander, and Vince," he offered.

**Gabbe was shaking hands with the tongue-pierced girl who'd been making out with the tongue-pierced guy outside. **

"Kareena," Gabbe beamed.

**Luce felt stupidly envious that she wasn't daring enough to do anything but take a seat closer to the unthreatening Todd.**

**Arriane flitted about the others, whispering things Luce couldn't make out like some sort of goth princess. When she passed Cam, he tousled her newly chopped hair. **

Arriane glared at Cam.

**"Nice mop, Arriane, " He smirked, tugging on a strand at the back of her neck. "My compliments to your stylist."**

**Arriane swatted him away. "Hands off, Cam. Which is to say: In your dreams." She jerked her head in Luce's direction. "And you can give your compliments to my new pet, right over there."**

"She's not your _anything,_" Daniel said while glaring at Arriane.

She merely rolled her eyes. "Calm down, Daniel, it hasn't happened." She seemed to think about this. "Yet."

**Cam's emerald eyes sparkled at Luce, who stiffened. "I believe I will, " he said, and started walking toward her.**

**He smiled at Luce, who was sitting with her ankles crossed under her chair and her hands folded neatly on her heavily graffitied desk.**

**"Us new kids have to stick together, " he said. "Know what I mean?"**

**"But I thought you'd been here before."**

**"Don't believe everything Arriane says." **

"Thanks a lot," Arriane muttered sarcastically. She glared at Cam. He smirked at her.

**He glanced back at Arriane, who was standing at the window, eyeing them suspiciously.**

**"Oh no, she didn't say anything about you, " Luce said quickly, trying to remember whether or not that was actually true. It was clear Cam and Arriane didn't like each other, and even though Luce was grateful to Arriane for taking her around this morning, she wasn't ready to pick any sides yet.**

Cam laughed. "Hear that, Ari? She's not ready to take sides _yet. _So she's not your pet." Cam grins smugly.

**"I remember when I was a new kid here ... The first time. " He laughed to himself. "My band had just broken up and I was lost. I didn't know anyone. I could have used someone without"-he glanced at Arriane-"an agenda to show me the ropes."**

"Band... right..." Daniel muttered. He knew the real reason why Cam was at Sword and Cross.

**"What, and you have no agenda?" Luce said, surprised to hear a flirting lilt in her voice.**

Daniel glared enviously at Cam, who smirked at him and raised a cocky eyebrow. Roland whistled lowly.

"Whoops, we got a catfight over here," Arriane said. Gabbe high-fived her.

Molly looked at the two boys. _Two boys fighting over Luce, _she thought. _Joy. _

**An easy smile spread across Cam's face. He raised one eyebrow at her. "And to think I didn't want to come back here."**

Daniel bared his teeth at Cam. Penn grinned.

**Luce blushed. She didn't usually get involved with rocker guys-but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green. Cam reached into his pocket and pulled out a green guitar pick with the number 44 printed on it.**

**"This is my room number. Come by anytime."**

Cam winked at Luce, who was blushing. "And by anytime, I mean _everyday._"

**The guitar pick wasn't far from the color of Cam's eyes, and Luce wondered how and when he'd had these printed up, but before she could answer-and who knew what she would have answered-Arriane clamped a hard hand down on Cam's shoulder. "I'm sorry, did I not make myself clear? I've already called dibs on this one." **

**Cam snorted. He looked straight at Luce as he said, "See, I thought there was still such a thing as free will. Maybe your pet has a path of her own in mind." **

**Luce opened her mouth to claim that of course she had a path, it was just her first day here and she was still figuring out the ropes. But by the time she was able to get the words straight in her head, the minute-warning bell rang, and the little gathering over Luce's desk dissolved.**

"Oh oh oh oh! Pick me, Luce! Pick me!" Arriane yelled with her arm waving in the air, voice similar to a little child's. Roland and Molly rolled their eyes at her.

Cam smiled devishly. "Too bad she can't resist my charm, Arriane," he said with a wink.

Daniel just huffed. _In the end, I hope I still get Luce, _he thought, _Even if I can't tell her the truth just yet._

**The other kids filed into desks around her, and soon it stopped being so noteworthy that Luce was sitting prim and proper at her desk, keeping her eye on the door.**

**Keeping a lookout for Daniel.**

This time, Daniel smirked at Cam.

**Out of the corner of her eye, she could feel Cam sneaking peeks at her. She felt flattered-and nervous, then frustrated with herself. Daniel? Cam? She'd been at this school for what, forty-five minutes?-and her mind was already juggling two different guys. **

Molly laughed. "Oh, believe me, Luce, it was worse before."

_Before? _Luce and Penn thought. _Before what?_

The other fallen angels glared at Molly. They couldn't tell Luce-or Penn-yet.

**The whole reason she was at this school at all was because the last time she'd been interested in a guy, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. She should not be allowing herself to get all smitten (twice!) on her very first day of school.**

**She looked over at Cam, who winked at her again, then brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. Staggering good looks aside**

"Told you, Ari," Cam said to Arriane, who glared at him together with Daniel. Roland laughed.

**-yeah, right-he really did seem like a useful person to know. Like her, he was still adjusting to the setting, but had clearly been around the Sword & Cross block a few times before. And he was nice to her. She thought about the green guitar pick with his room number, hoping he didn't give those out freely. They could be ... Friends. Maybe that was all she needed. Maybe then she would stop feeling quite so obviously out of place at Sword & Cross.**

"Friends only?" Cam whimpered emotionally, and immediately Luce felt guilty. She looked down.

Daniel cleared his throat. "Yes, Cam, _friends._" He emphasizes the word, hoping that Cam would get the point and lay off. But Cam just smirks at him. Daniel turns to Luce. "And for the record, you're not out of place."

Luce huffs. "But it sounds like I _am,_" she says. "And it sounds like you're not telling me something."

Before Daniel could explain, Molly started reading. She had started getting annoyed, and just wanted to finish the whole book already. _Can't we just get on with it? _she thought.

**Maybe then she'd be able to forgive the fact that the only window in the classroom was the size of a business envelope, caked with lime, and looked out on a massive mausoleum in the cemetery.**

**Maybe then she'd be able to forget the nose-tickling odor of peroxide emanating from the bleached-blond punk chick sitting in front of her.**

Gabbe cracked up. "Oh, chica, that's just Tina."

**Maybe then she could actually pay attention to the stern, mustached teacher who marched into the room, commanded the class to shapeupandsitdown, and firmly closed the door.**

**The smallest tweak of disappointment tugged at her heart. It took her a moment to trace where it had come from. Until the teacher shut the door, she'd been holding out a little hope that Daniel would be in her first class, too. **

Daniel smirked at every one of them, except Luce and Penn. Cam glowered at him, and put his arm around Luce. Daniel dropped the smirk. Luce was embarassed, and flattered at the same time. _Two guys at once? _

**What did she have next hour, French? She looked down at her schedule to check what room it was in. Just then, a paper airplane skidded across her schedule, overshot her desk, and landed on the floor by her bag. She checked to see who'd noticed, but the teacher was busy tearing through a piece of chalk as he wrote something on the board. Luce glanced nervously to her left. When Cam looked over at her, he gave her a wink and a flirty little wave that caused her whole body to tense up. **

Daniel glared at Cam once more, and he really looked like he was going to lose it. Penn had to bite her lip, hard, to keep her from laughing. Arriane and Roland though, cracked up immediately.

"Daniel," Roland said in between breaths, "Calm. Down."

**But he didn't seem to have seen or been responsible for the paper airplane.**

**"Psssst, " came the quiet whisper behind him. It was Arriane, who motioned with her chin for Luce to pick up the paper plane. Luce bent down to reach for it and saw her name written in small black letters on the wing. Her first note!**

_**Already looking for the exit?**_

_**Not a good sign.**_

_**We're in this hellhole until lunch.**_

**That had to be a joke. Luce double-checked her schedule and realized with horror that all three of her morning classes were in this very same room 1-and all three would be taught by the very same Mr. Cole.**

"Aww, c'mon," Penn said. "Mr. Cole ain't that bad." Penn smiled at her. But then it quickly faded. "'Cept the fact that he teaches the most boring subjects," she said with a groan.

**He'd detached himself from the blackboard and was sleepily threading his way through the room. There was no introduction for the new kids-and Luce couldn't decide whether she was glad about that or not. Mr. Cole merely slapped syllabi down on each of the four new students' desks. When the stapled packet landed in front of Luce, she leaned forward eagerly to take a look. History of the World, it read. Circumventing the Doom of Mankind. Hmmm, history had always been her strongest subject, but circumventing doom?**

"Another nerd," Molly said under her breath.

**A closer look at the syllabus was all it took for Luce to see that Arriane had been right about being in a hellhole: an impossible reading load, TEST in big, bold letters every third class period, and a thirty-page paper on-seriously?-the failed tyrant of your choice. Thick black parentheses had been drawn in black Sharpie around the assignments Luce had missed during the first few weeks. In the margins, Mr. Cole had written **_**See me for Makeup Research Assignment**_**. **

**If there was a more effective way of soul-sucking, Luce would be scared to find out.**

"No siree, this is the most advanced way of soul-sucking," Arriane said with a smirk. "And brain-devouring, ovary-implanting..."

"Geez, Ari," Roland said, "Please don't make me throw up."

Arriane rolled her eyes and smacked Roland's arm. _Exactly how many times does she have to hit him? _Luce thought.

**At least she had Arriane sitting back there in the next row. Luce was glad the precedent had already been set for SOS note-passing. She and Callie used to text each other on the sly, but to make it here, Luce was definitely going to need to learn to fold a paper airplane. She tore a sheet from her notebook and tried to use Arriane's as a model.**

The others had a collective chuckle.

**After a few origami-challenged minutes, another plane landed on her desk. She glanced back at Arriane, who shook her head and gave her a you-have-so-much-to-learn roll of the eyes.**

Everyone-except Molly-glared at Arriane.

"What?" she said.

**Luce shrugged an apology and swiveled back around to open the second note:**

_**Oh, and until you're confident about your aim, you might not want to fly any Daniel-related messages my way. Dude behind you is famous on the football field for his interceptions.**_

"Hell yeah!" Roland hooted. Everyone rolled their eyes at him.

**Good to know. She hadn't even seen Daniel's friend Roland come in behind her.**

**Now she turned very slightly in her seat until she glimpsed his dreadlocks out of the corner of her eye. She dared a glance down at the open notebook on his desk and caught his full name. Roland Sparks.**

"Stalker," Roland whispered loudly.

**"No note-passing, " Mr. Cole said sternly, causing Luce to whip her head back to attention. "No plagiarizing, and no looking at one another's papers. I didn't put myself through graduate school only to receive your divided attention."**

**Luce nodded in unison with the other dazed kids just as a third paper plane glided to a stop in the middle of her desk. **

_**Only 172 minutes to go!**_

"Well, that's a nice way of putting it," Daniel muttered sarcastically.

**A hundred and seventy-three torturous minutes later, Arriane was leading Luce to the cafeteria. "What'd ya think?" she asked.**

**"You were right, " Luce said numbly, still recovering from how painfully bleak her first three hours of class had been. "Why would anyone teach such a depressing subject?"**

"He'll ease up on you!" Arriane says encouragingly. Luce couldn't help but smile.

**"Aw, Cole'll ease up soon. **

Everyone chuckled.

**He puts on his no-guff face every time there's a new student. Anyway, " Arriane said, poking Luce, "it could be worse. You could have gotten stuck with Ms. Tross. "**

Annabelle-who was silent the previous minutes-screamed, "The Albatross!" Everyone laughed at her horrifying face.

**Luce glanced down at her schedule. "I have her for biology in the afternoon block, " she said with a sinking feeling in her gut.**

Everyone laughed again.

**As Arriane sputtered out a laugh, Luce felt a bump on her shoulder. It was Cam, passing them in the hall on his way to lunch. Luce would have gone sprawling if not for his hand reaching back to steady her.**

"That was intentional," Daniel accused Cam.

Cam merely smirked. "Oh? Prove it," he dares Daniel.

**"Easy there." He shot her a quick smile, and she wondered if he had bumped her intentionally. But he didn't seem that juvenile. Luce glanced at Arriane to see whether she'd noticed anything. Arriane raised her eyebrows, almost inviting Luce to speak, but neither one of them said a thing.**

**When they crossed the dusty interior windows separating bleak hall from bleaker cafeteria, Arriane took hold of Luce's elbow.**

**"Avoid the chicken-fried steak at all costs, " she coached as they followed the crowd into the din of the lunchroom. "The pizza's fine, the chili's okay, and actually the borscht ain't bad. Do you like meat loaf?"**

**"I'm a vegetarian," Luce said. She was glancing around the tables, looking for two people in particular. Daniel and Cam. She'd just feel more at ease if she knew where they were so she could go about having her lunch pretending that she didn't see either one of them. But so far, no sightings.**

Daniel and Cam both looked at each other with different degrees of glaring. If this was a cartoon, both boys would probably have steam radiating of their heads, nostrils flaring, and annoyed snarls on their faces.

**"Vegetarian, huh?" Arriane pursed her lips. "Hippie parents or your own meager attempt at rebellion?"**

**"Uh, neither, I just don't-"**

**"Like meat?" Arriane steered Luce's shoulders ninety degrees so that she was looking directly at Daniel, sitting at a table across the room. Luce let out a long exhale. There he was. **

Daniel smirked at Cam.

**"Now, does that go for all meat?" Arriane sang loudly. "Like you wouldn't sink your teeth into him?"**

Everyone cracked up. They laughed even harder at Luce and Daniel's embarassed faces. Neither could make eye contact with each other. Cam-surprisingly-laughs the loudest. He clutches his stomach like a lifeline, and was gasping for air when he stopped.

"Nice one, Ari," he said.

**Luce slugged Arriane and dragged her toward the lunch line. Arriane was cracking up, but Luce knew she was blushing badly, which would be excruciatingly obvious in this fluorescent lighting.**

**"Shut up, he totally heard you," she whispered.**

"I probably would've," Daniel muttered.

**Part of Luce felt glad to be joking about boys with a friend. Assuming Arriane was her friend.**

"Of course I am!" Arriane yelled, clutching the skin over her heart dramatically. She gasps, for effect.

"Sorry," Luce said with a tiny smile.

**She still felt unglued by what had happened this morning when she'd seen Daniel. That pull toward him-she still didn't understand where it came from, and yet here it was again. **

_I do feel strangely attracted to him, _Luce thought. _Is there something wrong with me? _Luce forced herself to look at Daniel. He was staring at her, with those deep, violet eyes, which Luce thought was beautiful. But there's something more than his beauty. _Secrets. _

**She made herself tear her eyes away from his blond hair, from the smooth line of his jaw. She refused to be caught staring. She did not want to give him any reason to flip her off a second time. **

**"Whatever," Arriane scoffed. "He's so focused on that hamburger, he wouldn't hear the call of Satan." She gestured at Daniel, who did look intensely focused on chewing his burger. Scratch that, he looked like someone pretending to be intensely focused on chewing his hamburger.**

"As if you couldn't be obvious enough," Arriane said with a roll of her eyes. Daniel smiled cryptically.

**Luce glanced across the table at Daniel's friend Roland. He was looking straight at her. When he caught her eye, he waggled his eyebrows in a way that Luce couldn't make sense of but that still creeped her out a little. **

"Seriously, Ro," Arriane said while cracking up, "You sound like a total pedophile."

Everyone laughed and Roland grinned and Arriane smirked and Luce smiled. They didn't notice Daniel's look at Roland.

**Luce turned back to Arriane. "Why is everyone at this school so weird?"**

They laughed again.

**"I'm going to choose not to take offense at that," Arriane said, picking up a plastic tray and handing one to Luce. "And I'm going to move on to explaining the fine art of selecting a cafeteria seat. You see, you never want to sit anywhere near the-Luce, look out!"**

**All Luce did was take one step backward, but as soon as she did, she felt the rough shove of two hands on her shoulders. Immediately, she knew she was going down.**

Everyone winced at that.

**She reached out in front of her for support, but all her hands found was someone else's full lunch tray. The whole thing tumbled down right along with her. She landed with a thud on the cafeteria floor, a full cup of borscht in her face.**

**When she'd wiped enough mushy beets out of her eyes to see, Luce looked up. The angriest pixie she'd ever seen was standing over her. The girl had spiky bleached hair, at least ten piercings on her face, and a death glare. She bared her teeth at Luce **

"Molly," Cam said, glaring at her. In fact, everyone looked like they were glaring at Molly. Everyone except Luce and Penn. Again, they were feeling left out.

_Molly and her anger issues again, _Annabelle thought.

**and hissed, "If the sight of you hadn't just ruined my appetite, I'd make you buy me another lunch."**

Molly smirked at Luce, who looked shocked. She felt hurt, somehow and for some reason. Daniel and Cam bared their teeth at her. "Don't talk to her like that!" they both yelled.

**Luce stammered an apology. She tried to get up, but the girl clamped the heel of her black stiletto boot down on Luce's foot. Pain shot up her leg, and she had to bite her lip so she wouldn't cry out.**

Cam let out a growl. _Literally. _

**"Why don't I just take a rain check, " the girl said.**

**"That's enough, Molly," Arriane said coolly. She reached down to help Luce to her feet. Luce winced. The stiletto was definitely going to leave a bruise.**

**Molly squared her hips to face Arriane, and Luce got the feeling this was not the first time they'd locked horns.**

"Believe me," Arriane said, "She's the one that's got horns. Not me."  
Everyone laughed lightly at Arriane's humor. Molly even cracked a smile.

**"Fast friends with the newbie, I see, " Molly growled. "This is very bad behavior, A. Aren't you supposed to be on probation?"**

**Luce swallowed. Arriane hadn't mentioned anything about probation, and it didn't make sense that that would prohibit her from making new friends. But the word was enough to make Arriane clench her fist and throw a fat punch that landed on Molly's right eye.**

Everyone was silent, anticipating Molly's move. No one had ever gotten away from a fight with her before.

**Molly reeled backward, but it was Arriane who caught Luce's attention. She'd begun convulsing, her arms thrown up and jerking in the air.**

"The wristband," Annabelle said with a sad smile. Luce instantly felt horrified and terrible at the same time.

"Oh shucks," Arriane gasps. "Someone cares."

Everybody rolls their eyes at her.

**It was the wristband, Luce realized with horror. It was sending some sort of shock through Arriane's body. Unbelievable. This was cruel and unusual punishment, for sure. Luce's stomach churned as she watched her friend's entire body quake. She reached out to catch Arriane just as she sank to the floor.**

**"Arriane, " Luce whispered. "Are you okay?"**

**"Terrific." Arriane's dark eyes flickered open, then shut.**

**Luce gasped. Then one of Arriane's eyes popped back open. "Scared ya, did I? Aw, that's sweet. Don't worry, the shocks won't kill me, " she whispered. "They only make me stronger. Anyway, it was worth it to give that cow a black eye, ya know?"**

Everyone cracked up just as Molly said, "I am _not _a cow!"

**"All right, break it up. Break it up," a husky voice boomed behind them. Randy stood in the doorway, red-faced and breathing hard. It was a little too late to break anything up, Luce thought, but then Molly was lurching toward them, her stiletto heels clicking on the linoleum. This girl was shameless. **

Molly hooted. "Hell yeah," she said.

**Was she really going to kick the crap out of Arriane with Randy standing right there?**

Everyone glared at Molly, who raised a cocky eyebrow at Luce. "Why not?" Molly said, and merely shrugged. Luce resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her, kicking the pathetic terrified feeling away.

**Luckily, Randy's burly arms closed around her first. Molly tried to kick her way out and started screaming.**

**"Somebody better start talking, " Randy barked, squeezing Molly until she went limp. "On second thought, all three of you report for detention tomorrow morning. Cemetery. Crack of dawn!" Randy looked at Molly. "Have you chilled yet?" **

Arriane muttered, "As if she ever does."

Cam shot Daniel a look. "Remind me to beat the crap out of her," he mouthed, gesturing to Molly. Daniel got it. He nodded. And Cam knew at that moment that they'd do anything to stop anyone who dared hurt Luce.

**Molly nodded stiffly, and Randy released her. She crouched down to where Arriane still lay in Luce's lap, her arms crossed over her chest. At first Luce thought Arriane was sulking, like an angry dog with a shock collar, but then Luce felt a small jolt from Arriane's body and realized that the girl was still at the mercy of the wristband.**

**"Come on, " Randy said, more softly. "Let's go turn you off."**

Arriane pumped her fist out. "Thank God!"

**She extended her hand to Arriane and helped heave up her tiny, shaking body, turning back only once at the doorway to repeat her orders for Luce and Molly. "Crack of dawn!"**

**"Looking forward to it, " Molly said sweetly, reaching down to pick up the plate of meat loaf that had slipped from her tray.**

"Uh oh," Gabbe said under her breath.

**She dangled it over Luce's head for a second, then turned the plate upside down and mashed the food into her hair. Luce could hear the squish of her own mortification as all of Sword & Cross got its viewing of the meat-loaf-coated new girl.**

**"Priceless," Molly said, pulling out the tiniest silver camera from the back pocket of her black jeans. "Say ... Meat loaf, " she sang, snapping a few close-up shots. "These will be great on my blog."**

"You're such a bitch," came the tiniest voice from the room.

All eyes were on Penn, who was glaring at Molly. Everyone-even Penn-looked surprised at her words.

"You really don't know when to stop, do you?" Penn asked. Molly looked surprised even, but she quickly recovered. She gave Penn the scariest glare that humankind has ever seen.

But before Molly could retort, Cam interrupted. "Just go," he said in a cold voice. And his eyes, oh so green. They almost looked terrifying.

So Molly rolled her eyes and read.

**"Nice hat," someone jeered from the other side of the cafeteria. Then, with trepidation, Luce turned her eyes to Daniel, praying that somehow he had missed this whole scene. But no. He was shaking his head. He looked annoyed.**

**Until that moment, Luce had thought she had a chance at standing up and just shaking off the incident-literally. But seeing Daniel's reaction-well, it finally made her crack.**

Everyone glared at Daniel. "Well, I'm not supposed to tell her, right?" He tried to explain to the angels and demons. But no one understood-or tried to understand-him.

**She would not cry in front of any of these horrible people. She swallowed hard, got to her feet, and took off. She rushed toward the nearest door, eager to feel some cool air on her face.**

**Instead, the southern September humidity cloaked her, choking her, as soon as she got outside. The sky was that no-color color, a grayish brown so oppressively bland it was difficult even to find the sun. Luce slowed down, but got as far as the edge of the parking lot before she came to a complete stop. **

**She longed to see her battered old car there, to sink into the fraying cloth seat, rev the engine, crank up the stereo, and peel the hell out of this place. **

Everyone looked at her, pityingly. Luce wished she would just get out and drive the car herself. But no, she was stuck in this nowhere, sitting with eight other mysterious people who she didn't know, listening to her supposedly future.

_I miss you Callie, _Luce thought. It felt so long, but she was sure that she's been in the room for a short amount of time.

**But as she stood on the hot black pavement, reality set in: She was stuck here, and a pair of towering metal gates separated her from the world outside Sword & Cross. Besides, even if she'd had a way out ... Where was she going to go?**

**The sick feeling in her gut told her all she needed to know. She was already at the last stop, and things were looking pretty grim. It was as depressing as it was true: Sword & Cross was all she had. **

**She dropped her face into her hands, knowing she had to go back. But when she lifted her head, the residue on her palm reminded her that she was still coated in Molly's meat loaf. Ugh. First stop, the nearest bathroom.**

"You go girl," Gabbe said. She smiled at Luce. "I might just be able to fix you up."

Luce grinned gratefully at the blonde, which earned an even bigger smile from her.

**Back inside, Luce ducked into the girls' room just as the door was swinging open. Gabbe, who appeared even more blond and flawless now that Luce looked like she'd just gone Dumpster diving, squeezed past.**

"I think you still look pretty," Both Daniel and Cam said their sentence at the same time, stuttering over it, even. Both boys narrowed their eyes at each other, suspiciously. Roland, Arriane, and Gabbe cracked up. Molly cracked the tiniest of smiles.

_Okay, weird, _Luce thought.

**"Whoops, 'scuse me, honey, " she said. Her southern-accented voice was sweet, but her face crumpled up at the sight of Luce. "Oh God, you look terrible. What happened?" What happened? As if the whole school didn't already know. This girl was probably playing dumb so Luce would relive the whole mortifying scene.**

"I am not playing dumb," Gabbe muttered. She didn't get what she did so wrong that made Luce hate her so much in the book.

**"Wait five minutes, " Luce replied, with more of an edge in her voice than she meant. "I'm sure gossip spreads like the plague around here."**

**"You want to borrow my foundation?" Gabbe asked, holding up a pastel blue cosmetics case. "You haven't seen yourself yet, but you're going to-"**

**"Thanks, but no." Luce cut her off, pushing into the bathroom. Without looking at herself in the mirror, she turned on the faucet. She splashed cold water on her face and finally let it all out. Tears streaming, she pumped the soap dispenser and tried to use some of the cheap pink powdered hand soap to scrub off the meat loaf. But there was still the matter of her hair. And her clothes had definitely looked and smelled better. Not that she needed to worry about making a good first impression anymore.**

Again, the group looked at Luce pityingly. They thought that she would actually have a chance to fit in Swords & Cross-as she did in the past with her other schools-but they probably failed already, with Molly's achieved attempt of embarassing her. Cam shot Molly another glare, but Daniel looked down at his hands. _I'm too harsh on her, _he thought.

_But what I did was for the good. Or maybe for the better. _

Definitely the better, Daniel agreed with himself. Good won't happen for a long time. It didn't happen for a long time.

**The bathroom door cracked open and Luce scrambled against the wall like a trapped animal. When a stranger walked in, Luce stiffened and waited for the worst.**

**The girl had a squat build, accentuated by an abnormal amount of layered clothing. Her wide face was surrounded by curly brown hair, and her bright purple glasses wobbled when she sniffed. She looked fairly unassuming, but then, looks could be deceiving. Both her hands were tucked behind her back in a way that, after the day Luce had had, she just couldn't trust. **

"Meet Penyweather Van Syckle-Lockwood," Arriane declared, her arms swooping over in a dramatic manner, with a booming voice similar to the announcers in the boxing ring and circuses. She bowed, then, her long hair swooping past her face. Roland leaned in and pulled her hair, just as Arriane said, "But hey, you can totally trust her."

While Arriane was busy pulling Ro's hair, Penn winked at Luce. "Sure," she said.

**"You know, you're not supposed to be in here without a pass," the girl said. Her even tone seemed to mean business.**

**"I know." The look in the girl's eyes confirmed Luce's suspicion that it was absolutely impossible to catch a break at this place. She started to sigh in surrender. "I just-"**

**"I'm kidding." The girl laughed, rolling her eyes and relaxing her posture. "I snagged some shampoo from the locker room for you, " she said, bringing her hands around to display two innocent-looking plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. "Come on, " she said, pulling over a beat-up folding chair. "Let's get you cleaned up. Sit here."**

Daniel smiled gratefully at Penn. He thought that Penn was a trustworthy person, and that she would be a great friend for Luce. She would keep her hidden, probably, maybe even sheltered from him. Maybe even guiding Luce _away _from him. _For the better, _he reminded himself.

Cam gave Penn a thumbs-up. She-almost immediately-blushed beet red. And although he always admired Penn, he liked Luce even more. He was grateful, too, that Penn had tried to help Luce. And even if she was all reserved for Daniel, Cam couldn't help but try to at least get her to like him.

**A half-whimpering, half-laughing noise she'd never made before escaped from Luce's lips. It sounded, she guessed, like relief. The girl was actually being nice to her-not just reform school nice, but regular-person nice! For no apparent reason.**

"Hey!" Annabelle yelled out, making everyone jump. "We can be nice, just gotta ask." Annabelle shrugged.

**The shock of it was almost too great for Luce to stand. "Thanks?" Luce managed to say, still feeling a little bit guarded.**

**"Oh, and you probably need a change of clothes," the girl said, looking down at her black sweater and pulling it over her head to expose an identical black sweater underneath.**

**When she saw the surprised look on Luce's face, she said, "What? I have a hostile immune system. I have to wear a lot of layers." **

"True story," Penn murmured.

**"Oh, well, will you be okay without this one?" Luce made herself ask, even though she would have done just about anything right then to get out of the meat cloak she was wearing.**

Everyone laughed, and Luce smiled, a tad bit embarassed.

**"Of course, " the girl said, waving her off, "I've got three more on under this. And a couple more in my locker. Be my guest. It pains me to see a vegetarian covered in meat. I'm very empathetic."**

**Luce wondered how this stranger knew about her dietary preferences, but more than that, she had to ask: "Um, why are you being so nice?"**

"Just gotta ask!" Annabelle repeated, while everyone laughed at her and Luce.

**The girl laughed, sighed, then shook her head. "Not everyone at Sword & Cross is a whore or a jock."**

"Excuse me?" Daniel spoke this time. "I'm not a jock," he said while huffing.

Arriane snorted. "_Right. _Because you're magically good at playing soccer for _no reason," _she pointed out.

"Plus, D, I bet you worked out while waiting for her," Roland said. He winked at Daniel, who blushed furiously.

"Well I'm not a whore," Gabbe and Molly said at the same time.

Beside Luce, Penn whispered to her, "Well maybe Gabbe's not a whore, but Molly's like a troll with a pixie cut all the time."

**"Huh?" Luce said.**

**"Sword & Cross ... Whores and Jocks. Lame nickname in town for this school. Obviously there aren't really any jocks here. I won't oppress your ears with some of the cruder nicknames they've come up with."**

**Luce laughed.**

**"All I meant was, not everyone here is a complete jerk."**

**"Just the majority?" Luce asked, hating it that she already sounded so negative. But it had been such a long morning, and she'd already been through so much, and maybe this girl wouldn't judge her for being a little bit gruff.**

"Of course not!" Penn clutched the skin over her heart, dramatically. Both Luce and Cam laughed at the same time, their voices carrying out in the room like wind. They looked at each other, and had a bit of eye contact, before Cam winked at her and turned to Molly. He waited for her to start to read.

**To her surprise, the girl smiled. "Exactly. And they sure give the rest of us a bad name," She stuck out her hand. "I'm Pennyweather Van Syckle-Lockwood. You can call me Penn."**

**"Got it," Luce said, still too frazzled to realize that, in a former life, she might have stifled a laugh at this girl's moniker. It sounded like she'd hopped straight off the pages of a Dickens novel. **

Penn managed to say "That hurts!" over the sound of laughter the group carried out.

**Then again, there was something trustworthy about a girl with a name like that who could manage to introduce herself with a straight face.**

**"I'm Lucinda Price." **

**"And everybody calls you Luce," Penn said. "And you transferred from Dover Prep in New Hampshire."**

**"How'd you know that?" Luce asked slowly.**

"Stalker alert," Roland coughed out. Penn glared at him playfully.

**"Lucky guess?" Penn shrugged. "I'm kidding, I read your file, duh. It's a hobby."**

**Luce stared at her blankly. Maybe she'd been too hasty with that trustworthy judgment. How could Penn have access to her file?**

Luce looked over at her female seatmate. Penn whispered, "I'll probably explain in the book." Luce got the point and nodded.

**Penn took over running the water. When it got warm, she motioned for Luce to lower her head into the sink.**

**"See, the thing is," she explained, "I'm not actually crazy." **

Molly snorts. "Yeah, right."

**She pulled Luce up by her wet head. "No offense." Then lowered her back down. "I'm the only kid at this school without a court mandate. And you might not think it, but being legally sane has its advantages. For example, I'm also the only kid they trust to be an office aide. Which is dumb on their part. I have access to a lot of confidential shit." **

**"But if you don't have to be here-"**

**"When your father's the groundskeeper of the school, they kind of have to let you go for free." So Penn trailed off.**

**Penn's father was the groundskeeper? From the looks of the place, it hadn't crossed Luce's mind that they even had a groundskeeper.**

"Yeaouch, girl," Penn scoffed, pretending to be offened. But she winked at the last second to let Luce know that she was just kidding.

**"I know what you're thinking," Penn said, helping Luce shampoo the last of the gravy from her hair. "That the grounds aren't exactly well kept?"**

**"No," Luce lied. She was eager to stay on this girl's good side and wanted to put out the be-my-friend vibe way more than she wanted to seem like she actually cared about how often someone mowed the lawn at Sword & Cross. "It's, um, really nice."**

**"Dad died two years ago," Penn said quietly. "They got as far as sticking me with decaying old Headmaster Udell as my legal guardian, but, uh, they never really got around to hiring a replacement for Dad."**

Luce didn't care that she didn't know this girl that well. She hugged Penn right away. Because if Penn was there for her in the book, Luce will be for her now, in the present. She hugged her because she knew that Penn needed it. And she was proved right when Penn hugged back.

**"I'm sorry, " Luce said, lowering her voice, too. So someone else here knew what it was like to go through a major loss.**

_Of course, _Daniel thought.

**"It's okay," Penn said, squirting conditioner into her palm. "It's actually a really good school. I like it here a lot."**

**Now Luce's head shot up, sending a spray of water across the bathroom. **

**"You sure you're not crazy?" she teased. **

**"I'm kidding. I hate it here. It totally sucks."**

**"But you can't bring yourself to leave," Luce said, tilting her head, curious.**

**Penn bit her lip. "I know it's morbid, but even if I weren't stuck with Udell, I couldn't. My dad's here." She gestured toward the cemetery, invisible from here.**

**"He's all I've got."**

That line almost sent Daniel from reaching over the table and spilling everything to Luce. He knew what it felt like, having something taken away from you. He knew, because he didn't feel it for just once. He felt it for multiple times, his heart breaking over and over again. He just knew.

**"Then I guess you've got more than some other people at this school," Luce said, thinking of Arriane. Her mind rolled back to the way Arriane had gripped her hand on the quad today, the eager look in her blue eyes when she made Luce promise she'd swing by her dorm room tonight.**

**"She's gonna be okay," Penn said. "It wouldn't be Monday if Arriane didn't get carted off to the nurse after a fit."**

**"But it wasn't a fit," Luce said. "It was that wristband. I saw it. It was shocking her."**

**"We have a very broad definition of what makes for a 'fit' here at Sword & Cross. Your new enemy, Molly? She's thrown some legendary fits. They keep saying they're going to change her meds. Hopefully you'll have the pleasure of witnessing at least one good freak-out before they do."**

Molly snorts. "Yeah, you better," she says. Then she shrugs. "But maybe, maybe you're going to be the one involved." She grinned devilishly at Luce, making the girl even more frightened than she even was before. Molly licked her lips, savoring her fear.

**Penn's intel was pretty remarkable. It crossed Luce's mind to ask her what the story was with Daniel, but the complicated intensity of her interest in him was probably best kept to a need-to-know basis. At least until she figured it out herself. She felt Penn's hands wringing the water from her hair.**

**"That's the last of it, " Penn said. "I think you're finally meat-free."**

**Luce looked in the mirror and ran her hands through her hair. Penn was right. Except for the emotional scarring and the pain in her right foot, there was no evidence of her cafeteria brawl with Molly.**

Everyone sighed happily at Penn.

**"I'm just glad you have short hair," Penn said. "If it were still as long as it was in the picture in your file, this would have been a much lengthier operation."**

"But I like my hair," Luce retorted as she ran her fingers through her hair. It was silky and smooth and everything was perfect. There was no question to it: She loved her hair more than any part of her body.

**Luce gawked at her. "I'm going to have to keep an eye on you, aren't I?"**

**Penn looped her arm through Luce's and steered her out of the bathroom. "Just stay on my good side and no one gets hurt."**

**Luce shot Penn a worried look, but Penn's face gave nothing away. "You're kidding, right?" Luce asked.**

**Penn smiled, suddenly cheery. "Come on, we gotta get to class. Aren't you glad we're in the same afternoon block?"**

**Luce laughed. "When are you going to stop knowing everything about me?"**

**"Not in the foreseeable future," Penn said, tugging her down the hall and back toward the cinder-block classrooms. "You'll learn to love it soon, I promise. I'm a very powerful friend to have."**

"Well, I am," Penn said as the others turned to stare at her. Molly suddenly slammed the book shut with a big wham, making almost everyone jump in their seats and glare at her.

Molly stared icily at each and every one in the room. "The chapter's done," she said.

* * *

A/N: My LSS (Last Song Syndrome) is really bad today, and I had to resist jotting down a part of the lyrics of Call Me Maybe today. GAH. I'm sorry. LOLOL.


	5. Drawing Dark

A/N: Hey guys. So I haven't been updating for a looooong while. I'm SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO sorry. :( But here's a new chapter (lol) and I hope you're happy with it :3

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen. AT ALL.**

* * *

Molly slammed the book and handed it to Annabelle, who rolled her eyes. "You didn't have to slam it, you know?" she said. "Just saying."

Molly glared daggers at Annabelle. "Your shirt's gay," Molly said-which Luce thought was the most childish thing she's ever heard-and rolled her eyes. "Just saying."

Annabelle glared at Molly this time, but said retorted nothing. Instead, she started to read with a cold, angry voice.

**THREE. DRAWING DARK.**

"Sounds spooky," Arriane said.

"No shit, Sherlock," Roland muttered dryly, under his breath.

**Luce meandered down the dank dormitory hallway toward her room, dragging her red Camp Gurid duffel bag with the broken strap in her wake. The walls here were the color of a dusty blackboard-and the whole place was strangely quiet, save for the dull hum of the yellow fluorescent lamps hanging from the water-stained drop-panel ceilings.**

**Mostly, Luce was surprised to see so many shut doors. **

"Get used to it," Molly said.

**Back at Dover, she'd always wished for more privacy, a break from the hallwide dorm parties that sprang up at all hours. You couldn't walk to your room without tripping over a powwow of girls sitting cross-legged in matching jeans, or a lip-locked couple pressed against the wall.**

**But at Sword & Cross... Well, either everyone was already getting started on their thirty-page term papers... Or else the socializing here was of a much more behind-closed-doors variety.**

"No, Lucey Luce," Roland said with a toothy grin. "The parties we have here are hosted by _me _and they are invited by _myself _and they are rocked by _I." _

Penn rolled her eyes. "You used your pronouns wrong. We learned that, like, seven years ago."

Roland said, "Whatever." His tone was deadly serious, but the look on his face proved him wrong.

**Speaking of which, the closed doors themselves were a sight to be seen. If the students at Sword & Cross got resourceful with their dress code violations, they were downright ingenious when it came to personalizing their spaces. Already Luce had walked by one door frame with a beaded curtain, and another with a motion-detecting welcome mat that encouraged her to "move the hell on" when she passed it.**

**She came to a stop in front of the only blank door in the building. Room 63. Home bitter home. **

"More or less," Cam muttered.

But Penn thought, _Home is where the heart is, they said. But for me, home is where my father is. _

**She fumbled for her key in the front pocket of her backpack, took a deep breath, and opened the door to her cell.**

**Except it wasn't terrible. Or maybe it wasn't as terrible as she'd been expecting.**

**There was a decent-sized window that slid open to let in some less stifling night air. And past the steel bars, the view of the moonlit commons was actually sort of interesting, if she didn't think too hard about the graveyard that lay beyond it. She had a closet and a little sink, a desk to do her work at-come to think of it, the saddest-looking thing in the room was the glimpse Luce caught of herself in the full-length mirror behind the door.**

"Hey, you're not ugly _at all," _Daniel said. His mouth had a little curve at the edge.

The others snickered at his attempt to get Luce to like him more. But inside, they wished Daniel could have been more cheeky.

**She quickly looked away, knowing all too well what she'd find in the reflection. Her face looking pinched and tired. Her hazel eyes flecked with stress. Her hair like her family's hysterical toy poodle's fur after a rainstorm. Penn's sweater fit her like a burlap sack. She was shivering. Her afternoon classes had been no better than the morning's, due mainly to the fact that her biggest fear had come to fruition: The whole school had already started calling her Meat Loaf. **

Annebelle cracked up, and everyone-especially Daniel and Cam-glared at her. "What?" she said, "It sounds funny to me."

**And unfortunately, much like its namesake, the moniker seemed like it was going to stick. She wanted to unpack, to turn generic room 63 into her own place, where she could go when she needed to escape and feel okay. But she only got as far as unzipping her bag before she collapsed on the bare bed in defeat. She felt so far away from home. It only took twenty-two minutes by car to get from the loose-hinged whitewashed back door of her house to the rusty wrought iron entrance gates of Sword & Cross, but it might as well have been twenty-two years.**

**For the first half of the silent drive with her parents this morning, the neighborhoods had all looked pretty much the same: sleepy southern middle-class suburbia. But then the road had gone over the causeway toward the shore, and the terrain had grown more and more marshy. A swell of mangrove trees marked the entrance into the wetlands, but soon even those dwindled out. The last ten miles of road to Sword & Cross were dismal. Grayish brown, featureless, forsaken. Back home in Thunderbolt, people around town always joked about the strangely memorable moldering stench out here: You knew you were in the marshes when your car started to reek of pluff mud.**

"Well the road to Swords & Cross isn't _that _bad..." Cam comments.

Luce snorts. "Speak for yourself."

Cam grins cheekily.

**Even though Luce had grown up in Thunderbolt, she really wasn't that familiar with the far eastern part of the county. As a kid, she'd always just assumed that was because there wasn't any reason to come over here-all the stores, schools, and everyone her family knew were on the west side. The east side was just less developed. That was all.**

**She missed her parents, who'd stuck a Post-it on the T-shirt at the top of her bag- we love you! Prices never crash! She missed her bedroom, which looked out on her dad's tomato vines. She missed Callie, who most certainly had sent her at least ten never-to-be-seen text messages already. **

"Your best friends sound wild," Annabelle said. She grinned at Arriane.

"Yeah, best friends!" Arriane and Annabelle high-fived each other.

Luce looked at them enviously. They obviously had been friends for a long time; maybe even longer than she and Callie's. Plus, life without Callie was probably impossible. She couldn't survive an hour without Callie's cheerful chatter, and her high pitched soprano voice.

**She missed Trevor.**

Cam and Daniel looked at each other. Their faces were somber and sad, aching because of the broken heart that Luce had in the book.

**Or, well, that wasn't exactly it. What she missed was the way life had felt when she'd first started talking to Trevor. When she had someone to think about if she couldn't sleep at night, someone's name to doodle dorkily inside her notebooks.**

The two boys-angels-looked down at their hands enviously.

**The truth was, Luce and Trevor never really had the chance to get to know each other all that well. The only memento she had was the picture Callie had snapped covertly, from across the football field between two of his squat sets, when he and Luce had talked for fifteen seconds about his squat sets. And the only date she'd ever gone on with him hadn't even been a real date-just a stolen hour when he'd pulled her away from the rest of the party. An hour she'd regret for the rest of her life.**

_Why? _everyone thought.

**It had started out innocently enough, just two people going for a walk down by the lake, but it wasn't long before Luce started to feel the shadows lurking overhead.**

_Oh no, _Luce thought. _Not the shadows. This is not good._

**Then Trevor's lips touched hers, **

_Shit, _Daniel and Cam thought.

Luce gasped. She felt her body tingle and blush, surprised by the sudden adrenaline rush that filled her. She blushed by the single thought of Trevor kissing her. She always had a crush on him.

The other angels-and demons-looked at each other. What did kiss mean? The boy obviously died, but will it affect Luce's future relationship with Daniel?

Penn was confused. She kissed a boy-as Penn had before-one night. So what? What was the big deal? Why did the others look sad?

**and the heat coursed through her body, and his eyes turned white with terror ... And seconds later, life as she'd known it had gone up in a blaze.**

"Up in a blaze? _What?" _Luce's earlier happiness died out, replaced by cold confusion and sorrow. Whatever was said did _not _sound good. "What does the book mean?"

Molly swallowed the hard lump in her throat. It was hard for her, even. "It means," she started, "that he went up in flames."

Luce's arms went slack and her face paled. The color in her cheeks went white, and it seemed that everything in the world stopped. "He... _burned?" _Luce shrieked. She clamped a hand over her mouth, fighting back tears, which were now pooling in her eyes.

Cam put around Luce, and nodded to Annabelle. He was silently telling her to start.

**Luce rolled over and buried her face in the crook of an arm. She'd spent months mourning Trevor's death, and now, lying in this strange room, with the metal bars digging into her skin through the thin mattress, she felt the selfish futility of it all. She hadn't known Trevor any more than she knew... Well, Cam.**

Cam snorted. "I'm still available," he said in a sing-songy voice.

Despite the tears choking her, a strangled laugh escapes Luce's mouth. "Okay," she said.

**A knock on her door made Luce shoot up from the bed. How would anyone know to find her here? She tiptoed to the door and pulled it open. Then she stuck her head into the very empty hallway. She hadn't even heard footsteps outside, and there was no sign of anyone having just knocked.**

**Except the paper airplane pinned with a brass tack to the center of the corkboard next to her door. Luce smiled to see her name written in black marker along the wing, but when she unfolded the note, all that was written inside was a black arrow pointing straight down the hall.**

"I know who sent that," Arriane said in the _exact _same sing-songy voice Cam used. "Of course, if Roland is the master of kareoke and parties, then _I _am the master of fashionable paper airplanes."

Roland rolls his eyes. "You wish, Ari."

**Arriane had invited her over tonight, but that was before the incident with Molly in the cafeteria. Looking down the empty hallway, Luce wondered about following the cryptic arrow. Then she glanced back at her giant duffel bag, her pity party waiting to be unpacked. She shrugged, pulled her door shut, put her room key in her pocket, and started walking.**

**She stopped in front of a door on the other side of the hall to check out an oversized poster of Sonny Terry, a blind musician who she knew from her father's scratchy record collection was an incredible blues harmonica player. **

"Woo!" Roland hooted. "Welcome to my room, baby!"

**She leaned forward to read the name on the corkboard and realized with a start that she was standing in front of Roland Sparks's room. **

"You led her to his room, eh, Ari?" Annabelle winked at them both.

Molly rolled her eyes.

**Immediately, annoyingly, there was that little part of her brain that started calculating the odds that Roland might be hanging out with Daniel, with only a thin door separating them from Luce.**

"Doubt it," Cam remarked dryly. "Danny over here likes solitude."

**A mechanical buzzing sound made Luce jump. She looked straight into a surveillance camera drilled into the wall over Roland's door. The reds. Zooming in on her every move. She shrank away, embarrassed for reasons no camera would be able to discern. Anyway, she'd come here to see Arriane-whose room, she realized, just happened to be directly across the hall from Roland.**

"I wonder if someone put us near each other on purpose," Arriane said.

Roland grinned. "I might have... _convinced _Randy to let us in together." He winked at Arriane seductively.

Arriane groaned. "Ugh... Ro... I _cannot _literally stand you!" She mocks disgust at Roland, who clutches the skin over his heart mockingly.

"That _hurts, _Ari," he said.

"Serves you right," she huffs.

**In front of Arriane's room, Luce felt a little stab of tenderness. The entire door was covered with bumper stickers-some printed, others obviously homemade. There were so many that they overlapped, each slogan half covering and often contradicting the one before it. Luce laughed under her breath as she imagined Arriane collecting the bumper stickers indiscriminately (MEAN PEOPLE RULE ... MY DAUGHTER IS AN F STUDENT AT SWORD & CROSS ... VOTE NO ON PROP 666), **

"What can I say? I love bumper stickers," Arriane said evilly.

**then slapping them with a haphazard-but committed-focus onto her turf.**

**Luce could have kept herself entertained for an hour reading Arriane's door, but soon she started to feel self-conscious about standing in front of a dorm room she was only half certain she'd actually been invited to. Then she saw the second paper airplane. She pulled it down from the corkboard and unfolded the message:**

"Told you, Ro," Arriane addressed Roland, "I'm the master of paper airplanes!"  
"Great," Roland said with fake enthusiasm.

_**My Darling Luce, **_

_**If you actually showed up to hang out tonight, props! We'll get along juuust fine.**_

_**If you bailed on me, then get your claws off my private note, ROLAND! How many times do I have to tell you? Jeez.**_

Roland chuckled.

_**Anyhow: I know I said to swing by tonight, but I had to dash straight from R&R in the nurse's station (the silver fining of my Taser treatment today) to a makeup biology review with the Albatross, Which is to say-rain check? **_

_**Yours psychotically, A**_

**Luce stood with the note in her hands, unsure about what to do next. She was relieved to read that Arriane was being taken care of, but she still wished she could see the girl in person. She wanted to hear the nonchalance in Arriane's voice for herself, so that she'd know how to feel about what had happened in the cafeteria today. **

"Oh, look! Someone actually misses you, Ari," Molly said.

**But standing there in the hallway, Luce was ever more uncertain how to process the day's events. A quiet panic filled her when it finally registered that she was alone, after dark, at Sword & Cross. **

"Spooky!" Penn scared the nuts out of Luce in her seat, she practically jumped out of Cam's arms. Luce smacked Penn's arm, while she was cracking up.

**Behind her, a door cracked open. A sliver of white light opened up on the floor beneath her feet. Luce heard music being played inside a room.**

**"Whatcha doin'?" It was Roland, standing in his doorway in a torn white T-shirt and jeans. His dreads were gathered in a yellow rubber band on top of his head and he held a harmonica up next to his lips. "I came to see Arriane, " Luce said, trying to keep herself from looking past him to see if anyone else was in the room. **

"Nope," Daniel said. "I doubt I'm there. I don't go." Daniel looked at Luce earnestly. "Except when there's someone special there."

"Cough LUCE cough," Arriane said.

**"We were supposed to-"**

**"Nobody's home, " he said, cryptically. Luce didn't know if he meant Arriane, or the rest of the kids in the dorm, or what. **

"Or Daniel," Molly said.

**He played a few bars on the harmonica, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Then he held open the door a little bit wider and raised his eyebrows. She couldn't tell whether or not he was inviting her to come in.**

_Roland Sparks isn't so bad after all, _Luce thought. _Not in the book, and not in reality. _She smiled at the thought of Roland being her-and Daniel-'s friend. It would be great to have a friend like Roland Sparks. And Arriane being her side kick (and partner-in-crime), of course.

**"Well, I was just swinging by on my way to the library," she lied quickly, turning back the way she'd come. "There's a book I need to check out."**

**"Luce," Roland called.**

**She turned around. They hadn't officially met yet, and she hadn't expected him to know her name. His eyes flashed a smile at her and he used the harmonica to point in the opposite direction. "Library's that way, " he said. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Be sure to check out the special collections in the east wing. They're really something."**

Annabelle, Arriane, and Roland cracked up. Even Molly and Cam allowed a small smile. Daniel ducked his head, obviously embarassed. Penn and Luce were confused. "Why?" she heard herself ask. "What's wrong with what Roland had said in the books?"

After taking a few deep breaths, Arriane said, "Oh, nothing. It's just that..." She grinned devilishly at Roland. "Ol' Daniel _loves _to hang out at the Special Collections area. _Especially _at night."

"Oh," Luce muttered as Penn nudged her. She felt the blush deepening on her cheeks, and she was desperate for a new change of topic. She could tell Daniel wanted one, too. "Where's Gabbe, by the way?" She noticed the absence of the blonde-haired beauty.

Annabelle waved her concern off. "Don't know. I'm pretty sure she's alright, though, she'll be back before you know it."

Luce smiled gratefully at her.

**"Thanks," Luce said, feeling truly grateful as she changed course. Roland seemed so real right then, waving and playing a few parting slides on the harmonica as she left. Maybe he'd only made her nervous earlier because she thought of him as Daniel's friend. For all she knew, Roland could be a really nice person. Her mood lifted as she walked down the hallway. First Arriane's note had been snappy and sarcastic, then she'd had a non-awkward encounter with Roland Sparks; plus she really did want to check out the library. **

They cracked up again. Daniel and Luce simultaneously blushed. Cam smiled, but sighed softly.

**Things were looking up.**

**Near the end of the hall, where the dorm elbowed off toward the library wing, Luce passed the only cracked-open door on the floor. There was no decorative flair on this door, but someone had painted it all black. As she got closer, Luce could hear angry heavy metal music playing inside. She didn't even have to pause to read the name on the door. It was Molly's.**

"Hey!" Everyone turned to look at Molly. "I love heavy metal, okay? It makes me feel..." Molly searches for the right word. "Calm," she says, which makes Luce think that she's a total lunatic since heavy metal is anything _but _calm.

**Luce quickened her steps, suddenly aware of every clop of her black riding boots on the linoleum. She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until she pushed through the wood-grained library doors and exhaled.**

_Scaredy cat, _Molly thought. She smirked, and tried to ignore Cam and Daniel's deathening glare.

**A warm feeling came over Luce as she looked around the library. She'd always loved the faintly sweet musty way that only a roomful of books smelled. She took comfort in the soft occasional sound of turning pages. The library at Dover had always been her escape, and Luce felt almost overwhelmed with relief as she realized that this one might offer her the same sense of sanctuary. She could hardly believe that this place belonged to Sword & Cross. It was almost ... It was actually ... Inviting.**

_As are my arms, Luce, _Cam thought.

**The walls were a deep mahogany and the ceilings were high. A fireplace with a brick hearth lay along one wall. There were long wooden tables lit by old-fashioned green lamps, and aisles of books that went on farther than she could see. The sound of her boots was hushed by a thick Persian carpet as Luce wandered past the entryway.**

**A few students were studying, none that Luce knew by name, but even the more punky-looking kids seemed less threatening with their heads bent over books. She neared the main circulation desk, which was a great round station at the center of the room. It was strewn with stacks of papers and books and had a homey academic messiness that reminded Luce of her parents' house. The books were piled so high that Luce almost didn't see the librarian seated behind them. **

"Miss Sophia," came the tinkling voice of Luce's seatmate. Penn. "She's _awesome," _Penn said. Her eyes twinkled, and she looked in awe, even. "I swear."

The others nodded at Penn approvingly. They also liked Ms. Sophia, for what she had done for them in the past. She was trustworthy.

_But there's something quite off about her, _Arriane thought. _She's gotten more... aggressive this year. Like, what the hell?_

**She was rooting through some paperwork with the energy of someone panning for gold. Her head popped up as Luce approached.**

**"Hello!" The woman smiled-she actually smiled-at Luce. Her hair was not gray but silver, with a kind of brilliance that sparkled even in the soft library light. Her face looked old and young at the same time. She had pale, almost incandescent skin, bright black eyes, and a tiny, pointed nose. When she spoke to Luce, she pushed up the sleeves of her white cashmere sweater, exposing stacks and stacks of pearl bracelets decorating both of her wrists. "Can I help you find something?" she asked in a happy whisper.**

"She's the _only _dedicated librarian at Swords & Cross," Penn said. "We're lucky to have her."

**Luce felt instantly at ease with this woman, and glanced down at the nameplate on her desk. Sophia Bliss. She wished she did have a library request. This woman was the first authority figure she'd seen all day whose help she would actually have wanted to seek out. But she was just here wandering around ... And then she remembered what Roland Sparks had said.**

**"I'm new here, " she explained. "Lucinda Price. Could you tell me where the east wing is?"**

**The woman gave Luce a you-look-like-the-reading-sort smile that Luce had been getting from librarians all her life. "Right that way," she said, pointing toward a row of tall windows on the other side of the room. "I'm Miss Sophia, and if my roster's correct, you're in my religion seminar on Tuesdays and Thursdays. **

Luce groaned.

Everyone turned their full attention to her. "Why?" Cam asked. He was genuinely interested why Luce groaned, since her very own origin came from God and Heaven and all those kinds of things.

She shook her head. "Nothing... It's just that religion bores me to _death!" _Daniel cringes at her emphasis of the word 'death'.

Roland asks, "Are you a Catholic, or something?"

Luce shales her head again. "Nothing," she says.

Everyone-except Penn-gapes at her. _"Nothing?" _they say. Even Molly looks surprised, with a weird expression on her face.

"Yeah, what's the big deal? It's not like I have two heads or anything." Luce looks deeply puzzled.

"Oh, nothing," Daniel muttered. He exchanged a knowing look with the others. She's not a Christian, Catholic, Buddhist, or _anything _at all. She wasn't baptised. What did that mean? Could it change the course of the curse that has bewitched them all?

_Well that was weird, _Luce thought.

**Oh, we're going to have some fun!" She winked. "In the meantime, if you need anything else, I'm here. A pleasure to meet you, Luce." **

**Luce smiled her thanks, told Miss Sophia happily that she'd see her tomorrow in class, and started toward the windows. It was only after she'd left the librarian that she wondered about the strange, intimate way the woman had called her by her nickname.**

**She'd just cleared the main study area and was passing through the tall, elegant book stacks when something dark and macabre passed over her head. She glanced up.**

_Oh God, _Luce thought. _Not here. Not in my serenity calm place in that weird school. Not there, too, please. _Luce felt a strange scared feeling, and she was glad that she was free from the shadows in the room she was in now.

_Please don't let them harm her. _Daniel willed himself to protect her as much as he can in the book, or in the future.

**No. Not here. Please. Let me just have this one place. **

**When the shadows came and went, Luce was never sure exactly where they ended up-or how long they would be gone. She couldn't figure out what was happening now. Something was different. She was terrified, yes, but she didn't feel cold. In fact, she felt a little bit flushed. The library was warm, but it wasn't that warm. And then her eyes fell on Daniel.**

All eerie and suspicious feelings vanished from the room. Arriane pumped her fist up high in the air. "I knew it!" she yelled repeatedly. "I knew it! I knew he was going to be there!" She hooted.

Roland grabbed her arms and Molly rolled her eyes. "Calm _down, _Arri," Roland said. But he couldn't calm the grin he was trying to fight on his face.

**He was facing the window, his back to her, leaning over a podium that said SPECIAL COLLECTIONS in white letters. The sleeves of his worn leather jacket were pushed up around his elbows, and his blond hair glowed under the lights. His shoulders were hunched over, and yet again, Luce had an instinct to fold herself into them. **

Penn smirked at Luce, as did the others, while Daniel blushed. Cam finally allowed himself to smile, thinking, _This might actually be a happy ending for Luce. _

Daniel was embarassed. _Why did she have embarrassing thoughts? _He certainly blamed the author of the book, whoever it was. It was odd, certainly, that he has never heard of a 'Lauren Kate'. That must be her pen name, and she could be posing as anyone. Any person living on this land.

**She shook it from her head and stood on tiptoe to get a better look at him. From here, she couldn't be certain, but he looked like he was drawing something.**

**As she watched the slight movement of his body as he sketched, Luce's insides felt like they were burning, like she'd swallowed something hot. She couldn't figure out why, against all reason, she had this wild premonition that Daniel was drawing her.**

Daniel gasped, and everyone turned to look at Luce. They all knew-except Penn and Luce-that Daniel had drawn her numerous times in the past. They think, _How could she sense these things? It has never been this deep before._

Luce was getting a tad bit too annoyed. "What's wrong?" she tried to ask politely.

Daniel cleared his throat, looking a bit out of himself, and said, "Nothing."

**She shouldn't go to him. After all, she didn't even know him, had never actually spoken to him. Their only communication so far had included one middle finger **

Everyone glared at Daniel.

**and a couple of dirty looks. Yet for some reason, it felt very important to her that she find out what was on that sketchpad.**

**Then it hit her. The dream she'd had the night before. The briefest flash of it came back to her all of a sudden. In the dream, it had been late at night-damp and chilly, and she'd been dressed in something long and flowing. She leaned up against a curtained window in an unfamiliar room. The only other person there was a man... Or a boy-she never got to see his face. He was sketching her likeness on a thick pad of paper. Her hair. Her neck. The precise outline of her profile. She stood behind him, too afraid to let him know she was watching, too intrigued to turn away.**

Everyone gasped once more. Annabelle covered her mouth with her hands. That is exactly what happened in England, before Daniel left, as said in the prologue. Even Luce and Penn found the dream suspicious, even if they did not know what was happening-what was at stake.

Penn said, "Wasn't that mentioned in the prologue...?"

Molly sighed. "Unfortunately," she said with a grim expression on her face.

**Luce jerked forward as she felt something pinch the back of her shoulder, then float over her head. The shadow had resurfaced. It was black and as thick as a curtain.**

_Damn, _Luce thought.

**The pounding of her heart grew so loud that it filled her ears, blocking out the dark rustle of the shadow, blocking out the sound of her footsteps. Daniel glanced up from his work and seemed to raise his eyes to exactly where the shadow hovered,**

Luce gasped. "You can see it?" she questioned him.

Daniel stopped himself from gasping, and stammered instead, "N-n-no. Probably a coincidence."

_Well, that was odd, _she thought. She nodded and smiled, politely.

**but he didn't start the way she had. Of course, he couldn't see them. His focus settled calmly outside the window. The heat inside her grew stronger. She was close enough now that she felt like he must be able to feel it coming off her skin.**

The others exchanged a look again. This was not good. Usually, that was what the pain felt like-but so much worse. They knew that it might happen, or it was close to happening. They knew it was coming.

But not now.

**As quietly as she could, Luce tried to peer over his shoulder at his sketchpad. For just a second, her mind saw the curve of her own bare neck sketched in pencil on the page. But then she blinked, and when her eyes settled back on the paper, she had to swallow hard. It was a landscape. Daniel was drawing the view of the cemetery out the window in almost perfect detail. Luce had never seen anything that made her quite so sad.**

**She didn't know why. It was crazy-even for her-to have expected her bizarre intuition to come true. There was no reason for Daniel to draw her. She knew that.**

_It could actually happen, _Cam thought, _It has happened before. You just don't know it, dear Luce._

**Just like she knew he'd had no reason to flip her off this morning. But he had. "What are you doing over here?" he asked. He'd closed his sketchbook and was looking at her solemnly. His full lips were set in a straight line and his gray eyes looked dull. He didn't look angry, for a change; he looked exhausted.**

"He's _always _exhausted," Annabelle said with a small smile. Daniel shot her a grave half-hearted look.

**"I came to check out a book from Special Collections," she said in a wobbly voice.**

**But as she looked around, she quickly realized her mistake, Special Collections wasn't a section of books-it was an open area in the library for an art display about the Civil War. She and Daniel were standing in a tiny gallery of bronze busts of war heroes, glass cases filled with old promissory notes and Confederate maps.**

Roland burst out laughing. "You didn't know?" he asked.

Arriane smacked the back of his head hard. Ouch. Roland rubbed the spot, his mouth forming in a silent 'o'. "Of course she doesn't," Arriane said as-a-matter-of-factly. "She's a newbie. How would she know?"

"Well you don't have to be mean about it," Roland huffed.

**It was the only section of the library where there wasn't a single book to check out.**

**"Good luck with that," Daniel said, opening up his sketchbook again, as if to say, preemptively, goodbye.**

**Luce was tongue-tied and embarrassed and what she would have liked to do was escape. But then, there were the shadows, still lurking nearby, and for some reason Luce felt better about them when she was next to Daniel. It made no sense-like there was anything he could do to protect her from them.**

_Well, there is something... _Daniel thought.

**She was stuck, rooted to her spot. He glanced up at her and sighed. "Let me ask you, do you like being sneaked up on?"**

**Luce thought about the shadows and what they were doing to her right now. Without thinking, she shook her head roughly.**

**"Okay, that makes two of us." He cleared his throat and stared at her, driving home the point that she was the intruder.**

**Maybe she could explain that she was feeling a little light-headed and needed to sit down for a minute. She started to say, "Look, can I-"**

**But Daniel shoved his sketchbook in his backpack. When he pushed past, his shoulders brushed hers. Even as brief as the touch was, even through layers of clothes, Luce felt a shock of static.**

Roland sighed. "Sometimes, D, you don't have to be rude to her."

Daniel sighed right after him. "It was the only way I could probably think of to get away from her," he said, gesturing towards Luce.

_But why would he want to get away from Luce? _both mortals thought.

Cam, Arriane, and Annabelle exchanged a look. They knew that the two mortals would probably know soon, and soon they hoped.

**For a second, Daniel stood still, too. They turned their heads to look at each other, and Luce opened her mouth. But before she could speak, Daniel had turned on his heal and was walking quickly towards the door. Luce watched as the shadows crept over his head, swirled in a circle, then rushed out the window into the night.**

"I've been wondering," Cam said from beside Luce, "How _can _you see the shadows?" Cam knew he was asking for all the angels and demons' sake in the room. They were all anxious to know the answer, since she had never... _ever _seen Announcers in her past lives.

Luce shrugged. "I don't know. I wish I did, but I never really did find out."

Cam nodded at her answer, and gestured for Annabelle to continue reading. She did as he said.

**She shivered in the chill of their wake, and for long time after that, stood in the special collections area, touching her shoulder where Daniel had, feeling the heat cool down.**

Annabelle closed the book silently-unlike Molly had, previously-and set it down. Just as the book's cover touched the table, there was an almost silent and eerie 'Poof!' and there appeared Gabbe.

Everyone stared at her. "Where have you been?" Daniel asked.

Gabbe smiled at them, and said, "Doing business. Why? What did I miss?"

Molly faked a smile at her, and said, "A whole chapter."

Gabbe pouted and frowned. "Aww, dang!"

"You're reading next, by the way," Annabelle added.

Gabbe's frown deepened, but she grabbed the book, anyway.


	6. Graveyard Shift

A/N: Like I said earlier, I was in a contest, and now it's FINALLY done. I loved it though. It was a writing contest, and hell, it was fun!

I think my grammar is not correct in some parts of the story. SORRY!

Anyway, leggo back to the story.

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen.**

* * *

Gabbe took out the gum in her mouth, and placed it in a piece of tissue paper that Luce did not know where it came from.

"**Four**," she read. "**Graveyard Shift.**"

**Ahhh, Tuesday. Waffle day. For as long as Luce could remember, summer Tuesdays meant fresh coffee, brimming bowls of raspberries and whipped cream, and an unending stack of crispy golden brown waffles. Even this summer, when her parents started acting a little scared of her, waffle day was one thing she could count on. She could roll over in bed on a Tuesday morning, and before she was aware of anything else, she knew instinctively what day it was. **

Arriane rubbed her stomach hungrily. "Jeez, Luce, lay it down a bit on the food stuff." She winked. "You're making me hungry!"

Molly rolled her eyes. "Ari, you know you're _always _hungry. You have the appetite of a hippopotamus."

**Luce sniffed, slowly coming to her senses, then sniffed again with a little more gusto. No, there was no buttermilk batter, nothing but the vinegary smell of peeling paint. She rubbed the sleep away and took in her cramped dorm room. It looked like the "before" shot on a home renovation show. The long nightmare that had been Monday came back to her: the surrender of her cell phone, **

Molly snorts. "It's just a cellphone," she retorted. But to Luce, it wasn't _just _a cellphone. It was her only communication to Callie; and her communication to Callie was her barrier between sanity and insanity.

"To you," Luce said.

**the meat loaf incident and Molly's flashing eyes in the lunchroom,**

Molly smirked. Everyone else glared at her.

"What did I miss?" Gabbe asked. But no one answered her, so she huffed.

**Daniel brushing her off in the library. What it was that made him so spiteful, Luce didn't have a clue. **

Everyone looked at Daniel.

**She sat up to look out the window. It was still dark; the sun hadn't even peeked over the horizon yet. She never woke up this early. If pressed, she didn't actually think she could remember ever having seen the sunrise. Truthfully, something about sunrise-watching as an activity had always made her nervous. It was the waiting moments, the just- before-the-sun-snapped-over-the-horizon moments, sitting in the darkness looking out across a tree line. Prime shadow time. **

**Luce sighed an audibly homesick, lonely sigh, which made her even more homesick and lonely. What was she going to do with herself for the three hours between the crack of dawn and her first class? Crack of dawn—why did the words ring in her ears? Oh. Crap. She was supposed to be at detention. **

_Of course I'll be homesick, _Luce thought. _Who wouldn't? _The school-Swords & Cross, was it?-sounded so terrible that she was already afraid of it herself. Homesickness probably wasn't an option during the first few weeks. _Or months, rather, _Luce thought darkly to herself.

Beside Luce, Cam chuckled. His deep voice brought her out of her reverie. She looked at him with an arched eyebrow. "What?" she asked him.

Cam shook his head. "Nothing, it just sounds funny when you say it."

Luce smiled a small, chinky smile, and shook her head. When she looked across, Luce saw Daniel staring at her. With a sad, lonely look on his face.

**She scrambled out of bed, tripping over her still-packed duffel bag, and yanked another boring black sweater from the top of a stack of boring black sweaters. She tugged on yesterday's black jeans, winced as she caught a glimpse of her disastrous bed head, and tried to run her fingers through her hair as she dashed out the door.**

**She was out of breath when she reached the waist-high, intricately sculpted wrought iron gates of the cemetery. She was choking on the overwhelming smell of skunk cabbage and feeling far too alone with her thoughts. Where was everyone else? Was their definition of "crack of dawn" different from hers? She glanced down at her watch. It was already six-fifteen. **

"You're late," Molly grumbled angrily.

"Oh give her a break. She's new," Daniel snapped at Molly.

The two practically had a glaring contest when Molly just scowled and rolled her eyes. She turned towards Gabbe, who was grinning crazily.

**All they'd told her was to meet at the cemetery, and Luce was pretty sure this was the only entrance. She stood at the threshold, where the gritty asphalt of the parking lot gave way to a mangled lot full of weeds. She spotted a lone dandelion, and it crossed her mind that a younger Luce would have pounced on it and then made a wish and blown. But this Luce's wishes felt too heavy for something so light. **

Cam and Daniel frowned. _She sounds deppressed and unhappy, unlike most of her past lives, _Daniel thought.

**The delicate gates were all that divided the cemetery from the parking lot. Pretty remarkable for a school with so much barbed wire everywhere else. Luce ran her hand along the gates, tracing the ornate floral pattern with her fingers. The gates must have dated back to the Civil War days Arriane was talking about, back when the cemetery was used to bury fallen soldiers. When the school attached to it was not a home for wayward psychos. When the whole place was a lot less overgrown and shadowy. **

**It was strange—the rest of the campus was as flat as a sheet of paper, but somehow, the cemetery had a concave, bowl-like shape. From here, she could see the slope of the whole vast thing before her. Row after row of simple headstones lined the slopes like spectators at an arena. **

**But toward the middle, at the lowest point of the cemetery, the path through the grounds twisted into a maze of larger carved tombs, marble statues, and mausoleums. Probably for Confederate officers, or just the soldiers who came from money. They looked like they'd be beautiful up close. But from here, the sheer weight of them seemed to drag the cemetery down, almost like the whole place was being swallowed into a drain. **

"Hey," Penn tried to fake scowl. "It's not _that _deppressing at Swords & Cross."

Luce shrugs. "It sounds pretty deppressing to me."

"Be glad it's not an actual church," Roland murmured.

Everyone groaned except Penn. "What's your issues with Churches?" she asked.

"Well, I don't have a religion," Luce said. "I wasn't baptised or anything." She ellaborated.

The others nodded. Annabelle had the faintest smile on her face, though Luce didn't know why.

**Footsteps behind her. Luce whirled around to see a stumpy, black-clad figure emerge from behind a tree. Penn! She had to resist the urge to throw her arms around the girl. **

"You don't have to resist," Penn said. She grinned, since the girl was obviously her newest-and only-friend at Swords & Cross.

**Luce had never been so glad to see anyone—though it was hard to believe Penn ever got detentions. **

"**Aren't you late?" Penn asked, stopping a few feet in front of Luce and giving her an amused you-poor-newbie shake of the head. **

"**I've been here for ten minutes," Luce said. "Aren't you the one who's late?" **

**Penn smirked. "No way, I'm just an early riser. I never get detention." She shrugged and pushed her purple glasses up on her nose. "But you do, along with five other unfortunate souls, who are probably getting angrier by the minute waiting for you down at the monolith." She stood on tiptoe and pointed behind Luce, toward the largest stone structure, which rose up from the middle of the deepest part of the cemetery. If Luce squinted, she could just make out a group of black figures clustered around its base. **

"**They just said meet at the cemetery," Luce said, already feeling defeated. "No one told me where to go." **

"**Well, I'm telling you: monolith. Now get down there," Penn said. "You're not going to make many friends by cutting into their morning any more than you already have." **

"True," Molly muttered.

"Well, I guess we've just gotta suck it up, if we _are _there," Cam said.

"You're just defending her!" Molly sneered, casting a dark look at Luce, who couldn't help but feel irritation. Not fear. Irritation, this time.

"Yeah? And?" Cam was glaring daggers at his other seatmate. "What are you going to do about it?"

Again, Molly had nothing else to do but glare at him.

**Luce gulped. Part of her wanted to ask Penn to show her the way. From up here, it looked like a labyrinth, and Luce did not want to get lost in the cemetery. Suddenly, she got that nervous, far-away-from-home feeling, and she knew it was only going to get worse in there. She cracked her knuckles, stalling. **

"**Luce?" Penn said, giving her shoulders a bit of a shove. "You're still standing here." **

Everyone laughed.

**Luce tried to give Penn a brave thank-you smile, but had to settle for an awkward facial twitch. Then she hurried down the slope into the heart of the cemetery. **

**The sun still hadn't risen, but it was getting closer, and these last few predawn moments were always the ones that creeped her out the most. She tore past the rows of plain headstones. At one point they must have been upright, but by now they were so old that most of them tipped over to one side or the other, giving the whole place the look of a set of morbid dominoes. **

**She slopped in her black Converse sneakers through puddles of mud, crunched over dead leaves. By the time she cleared the section of simple plots and made it to the more ornate tombs, the ground had more or less flattened out, and she was totally lost. She stopped running, tried to catch her breath. Voices. If she calmed down, she could hear voices. **

"**Five more minutes, then I'm out," a guy said. **

Arriane snorts. "Sounds like Roland."

"**Too bad your opinion has no value, Mr. Sparks." **

Everyone laughed. "It _is _Roland," Roland himself, said with a grin.

**An ornery voice, one Luce recognized from her classes yesterday. Ms. Tross—the Albatross. **

Everyone groaned.

**After the meat loaf incident, Luce had shown up late to her class and hadn't exactly made the most favorable impression on the dour, spherical science teacher. **

"She's a B-I-T-C-H," Gabbe spelled out. She had been avid of comments earlier and in the previous chapter, but now she was open and speaking. _And _smiling.

"The _worst _there is," Penn agreed.

"**Unless anyone wants to lose his or her social privileges this week"—groans from among the tombs—"we will all wait patiently, as if we had nothing better to do, until Miss Price decides to grace us with her presence." **

"**I'm here," Luce gasped, finally rounding a giant statue of a cherub. **

"If I was there, I would've said fi-"

"Oh shut it, Molly," Daniel said.

And Molly _did _shut it.

**Ms. Tross stood with her hands on her hips, wearing a variation of yesterday's loose black muumuu. Her thin mouse-brown hair was plastered to her scalp and her dull brown eyes showed only annoyance at Luce's arrival. Biology had always been tough for Luce, and so far, she wasn't doing her grade in Ms. Tross's class any favors. **

**Behind the Albatross were Arriane, Molly, and Roland, scattered around a circle of plinths that all faced a large central statue of an angel. Compared to the rest of the statues, this one seemed newer, whiter, grander. And leaning up against the angel's sculpted thigh—she almost hadn't noticed—was Daniel. **

Annabelle choked on her saliva noticeably. Roland and Arriane exchanged looks. Gabbe had a bright and happy grin on her face. Molly rolled her eyes.

_Well isn't that ironic, _Cam thought sardonically. _The angel is leaning on an angel. _

**He was wearing the busted black leather jacket and the bright red scarf she'd fixated on yesterday. Luce took in his messy blond hair, which looked like it hadn't yet been smoothed down after sleep ... which made her think about what Daniel might look like when he was sleeping ... which made her blush so intensely that by the time her eyes made their way down from his hairline to his eyes, she was thoroughly humiliated. **

**By then he was glaring at her. **

Everyone, in turn, glared at Daniel.

"**I'm sorry," she blurted out, "I didn't know where we were supposed to meet. I swear—" **

"**Save it," Ms. Tross said, dragging a finger across her throat. "You've wasted enough of everyone's time. Now, I'm sure you all remember whatever despicable indiscretion you committed to find yourself here. You can think about that for the next two hours while you work. Pair up. You know the drill." She glanced at Luce and let out her breath. "Okay, who wants a protégée?" **

**To Luce's horror, all of the other students looked at their feet. **

"Ouch," Roland commented. "Arriane, you won't even team up with your 'pet'?" Luce cringed at the word pet, but Arriane simply rolled her eyes.

"I was probably running in late," she said with a flat tone.

**But then, after a torturous minute, a fifth student stepped into view around the corner of the mausoleum. **

"**I do." **

**Cam. **

Cam grinned cheekily at Luce. _This Cam? This goofy Cam? _Luce smiled at the thought of Cam, who saved her from humiliation that day on the cemetery.

"Thanks," she murmured, looking up at him, since he was taller than her.

"Any time," he said. He _winked _at her.

**His black V-neck T-shirt fit close around his broad shoulders. He stood almost a foot taller than Roland, who moved aside as Cam pushed past and walked toward Luce. His eyes were glued to her as he strode forward, moving smoothly and confidently, as at ease in his reform school garb as Luce was ill at ease. Part of her wanted to avert her eyes, because it was embarrassing the way Cam was staring at her in front of everyone. But for some reason, she was mesmerized. **

"You can be mesmerized all you want," Cam winked at her again. "Baby, I'm permanently available."

"Well, I'm permanently _un_available," she teased.

All of them laughed.

**She couldn't break his gaze—until Arriane stepped between them. **

"Oh snap, Ari!" Roland yelled. "You are heartless."

"I actually did the right thing," Arriane shot back. "Do you think I'd let Mr Molester over here take over my pet?" There it is. _Pet. _Luce grimaced.

Cam glared at Arriane, who smirked at him. "Don't listen to her," Cam told Luce. "I'm not a molester."

"_Sure," _Arriance said sarcastically. "Keep telling yourself that, Cammy."

"**Dibs," she said. "I called dibs." **

"**No you didn't," Cam said. **

"**Yes I did, you just didn't hear me from your weird perch back there." The words rushed out of Arriane. "I want her," **

"**I—" Cam started to respond. **

**Arriane cocked her head expectantly. Luce swallowed. Was he going to come out and say he wanted her, too? Couldn't they just forget about it? Serve detention in a group of three? **

Everyone chuckled at her.

"What?" Luce said defensively.

"No one has really thought of that," Cam said, shaking his head.

"Uh, yeah? 'Cause detention partners _never _collaborate in real life," Molly threw in.

**Cam patted Luce's arm. "I'll catch up with you after, okay?" he said to her, like it was a promise she'd asked him to keep. **

**The other kids hopped off tombs they'd been sitting on and trooped toward a shed. Luce followed, clinging to Arriane, who wordlessly handed her a rake. **

"**So. Do you want the avenging angel, or the fleshy embracing lovers?" **

**There was no mention of yesterday's events, or of Arriane's note, and Luce somehow didn't feel she should bring anything up with Arriane now. Instead, she glanced overhead to find herself flanked by two giant statues. The one closer to her looked like a Rodin. A nude man and woman stood tangled in an embrace. She'd studied French sculpture back at Dover, and always thought Rodins were the most romantic pieces. **

"Ew!" Arriane's eyebrows scrunched up in disgust. "You're one of those love-sick puppy, aren't you?"

Everyone fell into silence after that. Daniel grimaced, bracing his arms on the table.

After a long time of silence, Luce said, "Maybe." She thought of it for a while. "No, scratch that. I _am _a love-sick puppy."

**But now it was hard to look at the embracing lovers without thinking of Daniel. Daniel. Who hated her. If she needed any further proof of that after he'd basically bolted from the library last night, all she had to do was think back to the fresh glare she'd gotten from him this morning. **

Daniel winced.

"**Where's the avenging angel?" she asked Arriane with a sigh. **

"**Good choice. Over here." Arriane led Luce to a massive marble sculpture of an angel saving the ground from the strike of a thunderbolt. It might have been an interesting piece, back in the day when it was first carved. But now it just looked old and dirty, covered in mud and green moss. **

"**I don't get it," Luce said. "What do we do?" **

"**Scrub-a-dub-dub," Arriane said, almost singing. "I like to pretend I'm giving them a little bath."**

Roland said to Arriane, "You're crazy."

"Duh," Annabelle said, nudging Arriane with a grin. They seemed like the bestest of friends _ever. _Aside from she and Roland, of course. "That's why she's there!"

_But I'm not crazy, _Luce thought glumly. _And I'm there. _

And to think of it, no one really _was _that insane at the reform school. Except Arriane.

**With that, she scrambled up the giant angel, swinging her legs over the statue's thunderbolt-thwarting arm, as if the whole thing were a sturdy old oak tree for her to climb. **

**Terrified of looking like she was asking for more trouble from Ms. Tross, Luce starting working her rake across the base of the statue. She tried to clear away what seemed like an endless pile of damp leaves. **

"Get used to it," Molly said.

**Three minutes later, her arms were killing her. She definitely hadn't dressed for this kind of muddy manual labor. Luce had never been sent to detention at Dover, but from what she'd overheard, it consisted of filling a piece of paper with "I will not plagiarize off the Internet" a few hundred times. **

"Old school!" Roland hooted, which earned simultaneous chortles and chuckles from the others.

"Attention hogger," Arriane muttered. But secretly, she was smiling inside. She was glad to have a friend just like her.

**This was brutal. Especially when all she'd really done was accidentally bump into Molly in the lunchroom. She was trying not to make snap judgments here, but clearing mud from the graves of people who'd been dead over a century? Luce totally hated her life right now. **

Everyone winced at this. She should value her life right now, since who knows when she'll burst into flames? Daniel had a pitying and sorrowful sort of look on his face.

**Then a tease of sunlight finally filtered through the trees, and suddenly there was color in the graveyard. Luce felt instantly lighter. She could see more than ten feet in front of her. She could see Daniel ... working side by side with Molly. **

**Luce's heart sank. The airy feeling disappeared. **

Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle erupted in laughter. Both Gabbe and Cam was howling, clutching their stomachs in the process. Penn, herself, tried to stifle her laughter. Luce was confused: What was everyone laughing about?

Molly scowled, and sneered at Luce. "_Yes, _we may be partners there. But we are _not _friends and certainly _not _lovers. But hey, _whatever floats your boat." _

The others don't even bother to be discreet in their laughter. They're all laughing and giggling around, without worries in the world. Molly's scowl is death-threatening. But even Daniel allows himself a small smile, despite the humiliation that the book brought beforehand.

**She looked at Arriane, who shot her a this-blows sympathy glance but kept working. **

"**Hey," Luce whispered loudly. **

**Arriane put a finger to her lips but motioned for Luce to climb up next to her. **

**With much less grace and agility, Luce grabbed the statue's arm and swung herself up onto the plinth. Once she was fairly certain that she wasn't going to tumble to the ground, she whispered, "So ... Daniel's friends with Molly?" **

**Arriane snorted. "No way, they totally hate each other," **

"Totally," Daniel added, mocking the Ice Queen. Molly sneered at him.

**she said quickly, then paused. "Why d'you ask?" **

**Luce pointed at the two of them, doing no work whatsoever to clear brush from their tomb. They were standing close to each other, leaning on their rakes and having a conversation that Luce desperately wished she could hear. "They look like friends to me." **

"**It's detention," Arriane said flatly. "You have to pair up. Do you think Roland and Chester the Molester are friends?" She pointed at Roland and Cam. **

"Ouch," Cam said, clutching the skin over his heart. "That nickname hurts, Arri. How come Ro doesn't have a nickname as _intriguing _as mine?"

Arriane snorts. "'Cause he's actually _nice. _Right, Ro?"

"Nope," Roland says. Cam smirks. Arriane glares.

**They seemed to be arguing about the best way to divvy up their work on the lovers' statue. "Detention buddies does not equal real-life buddies." **

"What _I _said," Molly says through clenched teeth.

"Jeez, Molly, I didn't know it was _your _phrase. But hey, _whatever floats my boat," _Arriane retorted.

Everyone-except Molly-laughed.

**Arriane looked back at Luce, who could feel her face falling, despite her best efforts to appear unfazed. **

"**Look, Luce, I didn't mean..." She trailed off. "Okay, aside from the fact that you made me waste a good twenty minutes of my morning, I have no problem with you. In fact, I think you're sort of interesting. Kinda fresh. That said, I don't know what you were expecting in terms of mushy-gushy friendship here at Sword Cross. But let me be the first to tell you, it just ain't that easy. People are here because they've got baggage. I'm talking curbside-check-in, pay-the-fine-'cause-it's-over-fifty-pounds kind of baggage. Get it?" **

**Luce shrugged, feeling embarrassed. "It was just a question." **

**Arriane snickered. "Are you always so defensive? What the hell did you do to get in here, anyway?" **

_Trevor... _Luce thought. If she were that Luce in the story already, she wouldn't have probably be able to live with herself whenever the subject was brought up. Trevor meant too much to her.

**Luce didn't feel like talking about it. Maybe Arriane was right, she'd be better off not trying to make friends. **

"That was _not _what I was implying," Arriane remarked dryly.

**She hopped down and went back to attacking the moss at the base of the statue.**

**Unfortunately, Arriane was intrigued. She hopped down, too, and brought her rake down on top of Luce's to pin it in place. **

"**Ooh, tell me tell me tell me," she taunted. **

**Arriane's face was so close to Luce's. It reminded Luce of yesterday, crouching over Arriane after she'd convulsed. They'd had a moment, hadn't they? And part of Luce badly wanted to be able to talk to someone. It had been such a long, stifling summer with her parents. She sighed, resting her forehead on the handle of her rake. **

"You don't have to tell her if you have to," Daniel said, looking directly at Luce. In the bright light, she could see his beautiful eyes glowing, and it made her flush. _What is wrong with me? _

"It might help for me in that book," Luce said. "It could." She shrugged nonchalantly.

**A salty, nervous taste filled her mouth, but she couldn't swallow it away. The last time she'd gone into these details, it had been because of a court order. She would just as soon have forgotten them, but the longer Arriane stared her down, the clearer the words grew, and the closer they came to the tip of her tongue. **

"**I was with a friend one night," she started to explain, taking a long, deep breath. "And something terrible happened." She closed her eyes, praying that the scene wouldn't play out in a burst under the red-black of her eyelids. "There was a fire. I made it out... and he didn't." **

**Arriane yawned, much less horrified by the story than Luce was. **

"You can't really take that lightly, can you?" Luce asked Arriane. She can't help but feel a little bit... _annoyed _by her, since this was Trevor they were talking about! He was important to Luce.

Arriane shrugged. "I've heard worse."

Luce didn't know what she meant.

"**Anyway," Luce went on, "afterwards, I couldn't remember the details, how it happened. What I could remember—what I told the judge, anyway—I guess they thought I was crazy." She tried to smile, but it felt forced. **

**To Luce's surprise, Arriane squeezed her shoulder. And for a second, her face looked really sincere. Then it changed back into its smirk. **

"**We're all so misunderstood, aren't we?" She poked Luce in the gut with her finger. "You know, Roland and I were just talking about how we don't have any pyromaniac friends. **

Cam scowled. "So you want _her," _he said, gesturing towards Luce, "as a pyromaniac friend? She isn't your play thing, Arriane."

"Chill, Cam, we aren't going to _play _with her." Arriane rolled her eyes. Roland smacked her bicep.

**And everyone knows you need a good pyro to pull off any reform school prank worth the effort." She was scheming already. "Roland thought maybe that other new kid, Todd, but I'd rather cast my lot with you. We should all collaborate sometime." **

**Luce swallowed hard. She wasn't a pyro. **

_Why would she be, anyway? _Penn thought. This book was _really _weird for her.

**But she was done talking about her past; she didn't even feel like defending herself. **

"**Ooh, wait until Roland hears," Arriane said, throwing down her rake. "You're like our dream come true." **

Molly snorts.

**Luce opened her mouth to protest, but Arriane had already taken off. Perfect, Luce thought, listening to the sound of Arriane's shoes squishing through the mud. Now it was only a matter of minutes before word traveled around the cemetery to Daniel. **

_Did she really care what I thought of her? _Daniel thought to himself, amused. He had mixed feelings about hearing her thoughts from the book. This is the first time that this has happened.

**Alone again, she looked up at the statue. Even though she'd already cleared a huge pile of moss and mulch, the angel looked dirtier than ever. The whole project felt so pointless. She doubted anyone ever came to visit this place anyway. She also doubted that any of the other detainees were still working. **

**Her eye just happened to fall on Daniel, who was working. He was very diligently using a wire brush to scrub some mold off the bronze inscription on a tomb. He'd even pushed up the sleeves of his sweater, and Luce could see his muscles straining as he went at it. She sighed, and—she couldn't help it—leaned her elbow against the stone angel to watch him. **

**He's always been such a hard worker. **

Everyone laughed. Gabbe was trying hard not to, anyway, and Luce respected her for that. But her face was turning a crimson red and chapped chuckles were escaping her lips. She furiously tried to seal them, though.

"Seriously, Luce?" Molly sneered. "_Oh my gerd, he's such a hard worker. Like, totally H-O-T hot." _

Luce blushed furiously, both angered and embarrassed. Daniel and Cam glared at Molly angrily.

**Luce quickly shook her head. Where had that come from? She had no idea what it meant. And yet, she'd been the one who'd thought it. It was the kind of phrase that sometimes formed in her mind just before she drifted into sleep. Senseless babble she could never assign to anything outside her dreams. But here she was, wide-awake. **

**She needed to get a handle on this Daniel thing. She'd known him for one day, and already, she could feel herself slipping into a very strange and unfamiliar place. **

"**Probably best to stay away from him," a cold voice behind her said. **

"Great. The Ice Queen decided to come," Penn murmured beside Luce, who glanced over at her. Under the table, she high-fived Penn.

**Luce whipped around to find Molly, in the same pose she'd found her in yesterday: hands on her hips, pierced nostrils flaring. Penn had told her that Sword Cross's surprising ruling that allowed facial piercings came from the headmaster's own reluctance to remove the diamond stud in his ear. **

"Oh, really, Pennyloafer? You _told _her? How _nice _of you to do that," Molly sneered.

Luce had come to her new friend's defense. "Back off, she's just telling me stuff," Luce said in a fiery voice. All her friends around her turned to look at Luce, never hearing her use that voice. Even Molly sounded surprised.

Molly huffed, and rolled her eyes, having lost another glaring contest. Luce had to suppress the growing grin.

"**Who?" she asked Molly, knowing she sounded stupid. **

**Molly rolled her eyes. "Just trust me when I tell you that falling for Daniel would be a very, very bad idea." **

**Before Luce could answer, Molly was gone. But Daniel—it was almost as if he'd heard his name—was looking straight at her. Then walking straight at her.**

_Shit, _Luce thought.

**She knew the sun had gone behind a cloud. **

"Yeouch, Danny," Roland said, patting Daniel's arm. Daniel rolled his eyes.

**If she could break his stare, she could look up and see it for herself. But she couldn't look up, she couldn't look away, and for some reason, she had to squint to see him. Almost like Daniel was creating his own light, like he was blinding her. A hollow ringing noise filled up her ears, and her knees began to tremble. **

"Oooh, Danny has an effect on Lulucindaaa," Gabbe said, teasingly. There was a strange twinkle in her eyes which made Luce think that she was extremely proud of her and Daniel. But why?

It felt odd, having a friend praising you for a relationship that does not exist.

**She wanted to pick up her rake and pretend she didn't see him coming. But it was too late to play it cool. **

"**What'd she say to you?" he asked. **

"**Um," she hedged, racking her brain for a sensible lie. Finding nothing. She cracked her knuckles. **

**Daniel cupped his hand over hers. "I hate it when you do that." **

Luce was hesitant, when she asked, "You saw me do that before?"

Daniel looked puzzled then.. _terrified? _when he stammered, "N-no, maybe I'm just annoyed by it?" Daniel sounded unsure, and he winced. _Way to go, D. You're so believable, _Daniel thought to himself.

**Luce jerked away instinctively. His hand on hers had been so fleeting, yet she felt her face flush. He meant it was a pet peeve of his, that knuckle cracking from anyone would bother him, right? Because to say that he hated it when she did that implied that he'd seen her do it before. And he couldn't have. He barely knew her. **

**Then why did this feel like a fight they'd had before? **

_They did have this fight before. _All the angels and demons sighed, for Lucinda could no longer remember. Only bits and pieces were left behind, but her hunger for Daniel stayed intact and whole.

"**Molly told me to stay away from you," she said finally. **

**Daniel tilted his head from side to side, seeming to consider this. "She's probably right." **

"Of _course," _Molly declared cockily. "I'm _the _Molly."

"Yeah," Arriane said. "And I'm Arriane and I have a peacock as a pet. Woohoo!" she said sarcastically.

Molly scowled.

**Luce shivered. A shadow drifted over them, darkening the angel's face just long enough for Luce to worry. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, praying Daniel couldn't tell anything was strange. **

**But the panic was rising inside her. She wanted to run. She couldn't run. What if she got lost in the cemetery? **

"Then, good luck," Roland said, grinning at Luce. She couldn't help but smile back, finding that his smile was contagious.

**Daniel followed her gaze toward the sky. "What is it?" **

"**Nothing." **

"**So are you going to do it?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest, a dare. **

"**What?" she said. Run? **

"No, silly," Cam said. She giggled, though she didn't know why. _What on Earth is wrong with me?_ Luce thought to herself.

**Daniel took a step toward her. He was now less than a foot away. She held her breath. She kept her body completely still. She waited. **

"**Are you going to stay away from me?" **

**It almost sounded like he was flirting. **

Daniel snorted inwardly. He wouldn't dare flirt with her, now that they just met.

**But Luce was completely out of sorts. Her brow was damp with sweat, and she squeezed her temples between two fingers, trying to regain possession of her body, trying to take it back from his control. She was totally unprepared to flirt back. That was, if what he was doing was actually flirting. **

**She took a step back. "I guess so." **

"**Didn't hear you," he whispered, cocking an eyebrow and taking another step closer. **

"Oh, come _on, _D, are you seriously going to play cocky _now?" _Annabelle said, groaning.

Daniel, however, grinned. "How should I know if she'll be true to what she says?"

Luce put her hands on her hips. "Of course I'll stay true to what I say!" she says defensively. But in the inside, she knew that there was _no _way she could ever stop her growing interest of Daniel.

Daniel, as if reading her mind, cocks an eyebrow.

**Luce backed up again, farther this time. She practically slammed into the base of the statue, and could feel the gritty stone foot of the angel scraping her back. A second, darker, colder shadow whooshed over them. She could have sworn Daniel shivered along with her. **

_Oh crap, _Arriane thought to herself. _This is not good._

_What do the shadows mean? _Penn thought furiously to herself. It was both confusing and overwhelming for Luce to describe the 'shadows' that way. It sparked an interest inside Penn.

**And then the deep groan of something heavy startled them both. Luce gasped as the top of the marble statue teetered over them, like a tree branch swaying in the breeze. For a second, it seemed to hover in the air. **

_Oh shit, _Cam thought.

**Luce and Daniel stood staring at the angel. Both of them knew it was on its way down. The angel's head bowed slowly toward them, like it was praying—and then the whole statue picked up speed as it started hurtling down. **

_Oh no, _Gabbe thought. She frowned.

**Luce felt Daniel's hand wrap around her waist instantly, tightly, like he knew exactly where she began and where she ended. **

_He did know where she began and where she ended. In fact, he knew so well. _

**His other hand covered her head and forced her down just as the statue toppled over them. Right where they'd been standing. It landed with a massive crash—headfirst in the mud, with its feet still resting on the plinth, leaving a little triangle underneath, where Daniel and Luce crouched.**

**They were panting, nose to nose, Daniel's eyes scared. Between their bodies and the statue, there were only a few inches of space. **

Someone in the room wolf-whistled, and Daniel and Luce blushed immediately. Daniel's face was painted crimson red, and she could only imagine hers being the same color. Her blush deepened when he caught her staring.

"**Luce?" he whispered. **

**All she could do was nod. **

**His eyes narrowed. "What did you see?" **

_Everything, _they thought.

**Then a hand appeared and Luce felt herself being pulled out of the space under the statue. There was a scraping against her back and then a waft of air. She saw the flicker of daylight again. The detention crew stood gaping, except for Ms. Tross, who was glaring, and Cam, who helped Luce to her feet. **

"**Are you okay?" Cam asked, running his eyes over her for scrapes and bruises and brushing some dirt from her shoulder. "I saw the statue coming down and I ran over to try and stop it, but it was already... You must have been so terrified." **

"And there goes Chester the Molester, ruining the day," Gabbe said fake glumly. Arriane winked at the blonde.

Cam huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Do _not _call me that," he said to Gabbe. He turned to Arriane, "I hate you for that nickname."

Arriane and Roland snickered.

**Luce didn't respond. Terrified was only part of how she'd felt. **

**Daniel, already on his feet, didn't even turn around to see whether she was okay or not. He just walked away. **

"Well, that's mean," Annabelle said.

**Luce's jaw dropped as she watched him go, as she watched everyone else seem not to care that he had bailed. **

"**What did you do?" Ms. Tross asked. **

"**I don't know. One minute, we were standing there"—Luce glanced at Ms. Tross—"um, working. The next thing I knew, the statue just fell over." **

**The Albatross bent down to examine the shattered angel. Its head had cracked straight down the middle. She started muttering something about forces of nature and old stones.**

"Crazy ol' Albatross," Penn muttered. She hated the teacher, too, like any other student at Swords & Cross. Her snappy attitude always got in the way for Penn's method of learning. Plus, she was _annoying. _

Gabbe handed the book to Annabelle, who glanced at the book like it was treasure. She accepted it gladly.

* * *

A/N: That's a wrap, everybody!


	7. The Inner Circle

A/N: Long time no update? HAHA, it felt like that to me. :-)

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN FALLEN. Seriously.**

* * *

Arriane hooted. "So so _so _close to touching that book," she said. Her eyes gleamed oddly, and she casted Luce a strange glance. _Really strange. _

"Oh, don't worry, Arri," Annabelle said, "I'll read it really really _really _slowly," she promised, crossing her heart.

"Don't you _dare," _Arriane growled viciously.

"Try me."

Roland held a tough grip on Arriane's arms as she growled and muttered obscenities against Annabelle, who laughed.

"**FIVE**," Annabelle said slowly, as she promised. "**THE INNER CIRCLE**."

"**Don't ever scare me like that again!" Callie reprimanded Luce on Wednesday evening. **

**It was just before sundown and Luce was folded into the Sword Cross phone cubby, a tiny beige confine in the middle of the front office area. It was far from private, but at least no one else was loafing around. Her arms were still sore from the graveyard shift at yesterday's detention, her pride still wounded from Daniel's fleeing the second they'd been pulled out from under the statue. **

"Don't worry," Cam said, winking at Luce. His eyes had an unusual twinkle in them. As if he found the text more amusing than the previous ones. Either that, or he found Annabelle and Arriane's snaps amusing. Luce chose the latter. "Daniel's just an ass."

Daniel scowled and Luce laughed.

**But for fifteen minutes, Luce was trying hard to push all that out of her mind, to soak up every blissfully frantic word her best friend could spit out in the allotted time. It felt so good to hear Callie's high-pitched voice, Luce almost didn't care that she was being yelled at. **

"**We promised we wouldn't go an hour without speaking," Callie continued accusingly. "I thought someone had eaten you alive! Or that maybe they stuck you in solitary in one of those straitjackets where you have to chew through your sleeve to scratch your face. For all I knew, you could have descended into the ninth circle of—" **

Everyone cracked up at Callie's suspicions. They thought it was rather silly for Callie to assume all these things. But, obviously, everyone knew she was just overreacting and babbling nonsense on the phone.

_Of course she won't be in danger, _Daniel thought as he chuckled. _They'd have to go through me before they hurt her. _

"**Okay, Mom," Luce said, laughing and settling into her role as Callie's breathing instructor. **

Everyone laughed again.

"**Relax." For a split second, she felt guilty that she hadn't used her one phone call to dial up her real mom. But she knew Callie would wig out if she ever discovered Luce hadn't seized her very first opportunity to get in touch. And in a weird way, it was always soothing to hear Callie's hysterical voice. It was one of the many reasons the two were such a good fit: Her best friend's over-the-top paranoia actually had a calming effect on Luce. She could just picture Callie in her dorm room at Dover, pacing her bright orange area rug, with Oxy smeared over her t-zone and pedicure foam separating her still-wet fuchsia toenails. **

"_Or,_" Cam said for the second time. "_We _could be a good fit," he said, winking at her. Luce suppressed a chortle. "Y'know, I heard girls this generation are interested in those bad-boy kinds of people. I'm kind of one of those _perfect _people." He winked a second time.

Luce stifled a laugh. "Hardly. But if you want to lead yourself on, then go ahead." She smirked flawlessly. Who said Luce couldn't do the cocky attitude? She could play this game that she and Cam played.

Everyone laughed again, Daniel the loudest. He had a smirk on his face, himself.

"**Don't Mom me!" Callie huffed. "Start talking. What are the other kids like? Are they all scary and popping diuretics like in the movies? What about your classes? How's the food?"**

Penn snorted. _She asks about the food? Of all the things? _

**Through the phone, Luce could hear Roman Holiday playing in the background on Callie's tiny TV. Luce's favorite scene had always been the one where Audrey Hepburn woke in Gregory Peck's room, still convinced the night before had all been a dream. Luce closed her eyes and tried to picture the shot in her mind. Mimicking Audrey's drowsy whisper, she quoted the line she knew Callie would recognize: "There was a man, he was so mean to me. It was wonderful." **

"That is _soo _Daniel," Annabelle said.

"Minus the wonderful part," Arriane added, nodding.

"So, Daniel, how would you react to this statement?" Roland said, teasingly.

"There's a reason for being mean. Don't be so assuming," Daniel reiterated, ignoring Roland's question.

Molly rolled her eyes. "You don't have to be a bitch about it," she threw back at him.

"Look who's talking."

"Okay. _Fine. _Ignore me, then," Roland huffed.

"**Okay, Princess, it's your life I want to hear about," Callie teased. **

**Unfortunately, there was nothing about Sword Cross that Luce would even consider describing as wonderful. Thinking about Daniel for, oh, the eightieth time that day, she realized that the only parallel between her life and Roman Holiday was that she and Audrey both had a guy who was aggressively rude and uninterested in them. **

Everyone half-laughed and half-glared at Daniel. Luce shrugged nonchalantly.

**Luce rested her head against the beige linoleum of the cubby walls. Someone had carved the words BIDING MY TIME. Under normal circumstances, this would be when Luce would spill everything about Daniel to Callie. **

**Except, for some reason, she didn't. **

"Because Daniel has been a _very, very _bad boy," Cam said mockingly.

Daniel's face visibly darkened as Cam said this. "Look who's talking," Daniel said a second time.

Cam laughed mockingly, jokingly. "Aww, is little Danny running out of retorts?"

Daniel scowled and flipped him the middle finger under the table. Cam smirked, sensing action under the table and flipped him _his _finger back. They thought Luce couldn't see all the testosterone war, but; in fact, she _could. _She smirked and giggled, laughing to herself.

**Whatever she might want to say about Daniel wouldn't be based on anything that had actually happened between them. And Callie was big on guys making an effort to show they were worthy of you. She'd want to hear things like how many times he'd held open a door for Luce, or whether he'd noticed how good her French accent was. Callie didn't think there was anything wrong with guys writing the kind of sappy love poems Luce could never take seriously. Luce would come up severely short on things to say about Daniel. In fact, Callie'd be much more interested in hearing about someone like Cam. **

Cam, liking the way where the direction of the book was going, smirked at Daniel. Daniel, in turn to Cam's reaction, glowered at him.

"Can you stop with all those dark looks?" Molly snapped. She scowled. "It's getting on my nerves."

"_Everything _gets on your nerves," Penn muttered. Luce giggled quietly. But apparently, not quietly enough, because soon enough Molly's glare had met her eyes. Luce cleared her throat and looked away.

"**Well, there is this guy here," Luce whispered into the phone. **

"**I knew it!" Callie squealed. "Name." **

**Daniel. Daniel. Luce cleared her throat. "Cam." **

Daniel growled.

"**Direct, uncomplicated. I can dig it. Start from the beginning." **

"**Well, nothing's really happened yet." **

"**He thinks you're gorgeous, blah blah blah. I told you the cropped cut made you look like Audrey. Get to the good stuff." **

Arriane and Annabelle laughed. "I like this chick," Arriane said.

"She chooses good friends," Annabelle agreed.

"But she needs more..." Arriane trailed off, searching for a word. She was snapping her fingers until she came up with a word. "Spunk!" She yelled. "Well, more like wild."

"Yup," Annabelle said.

_Trust me, _Luce thought, _You should see Callie shopping. She's wilder than a herd of hippos. _

"**Well—" Luce broke off. The sound of footsteps in the lobby silenced her. She leaned out the side of the cubby and craned her neck to see who was interrupting the best fifteen minutes she'd had in three whole days. **

**Cam was walking toward her. **

**Speak of the devil. **

Daniel snorted. "The _real _devil. Not figuratively speaking."

"Oh. _Look who's talking,_" Cam retorted teasingly.

Daniel's jaw was unusually set and his shoulders were rigid with anger. Cam's words really set him off, and even though he had no intention of getting pissed _in front of Luce, _he couldn't help it.

"One more word and I'll punch your balls," Daniel said. "_If _you even have those," he added, chuckling. Smirking.

Horrified, Cam narrowed his eyes dangerously. He tried not to growl, but a small snarl escaped him. He was rabid like a dog, and Luce couldn't help but chuckle. The others, too, were laughing at not just Cam, but both of them.

**She swallowed the horrifically lame words on the tip of her tongue: He gave me his guitar pick. She still had it tucked in her pocket. **

**Cam's demeanor was casual, as if by some stroke of luck he hadn't heard what she'd been saying. He seemed to be the only kid at Sword Cross who didn't change out of his school uniform the minute classes were over. But the black-on-black look worked for him, just as much as it worked to make Luce look like a grocery store checkout girl. **

**Cam was twirling a golden pocket watch that swung from a long chain looped around his index finger. Luce followed its bright arc for a moment, almost mesmerized, until Cam clapped the face of the watch to a stop in his fist. He looked down at it, then up at her. **

"**Sorry." His lips pursed in confusion. "I thought I signed up for the seven o'clock phone call." He shrugged. "But I must have written it down wrong." **

"Yeah right," Daniel muttered.

**Luce's heart sank when she glanced at her own watch. She and Callie had barely said fifteen words to each other—how could her fifteen minutes already be up? **

Arriane exhaled. "Time flies by when you're having fun."

"Y'think the time would be different when we go back?" Penn asked.

"Probably," Arriane replied casually. She had no intention of going back to where she was before this.

"**Luce? Hello?" Callie sounded impatient on the other end of the phone. "You're being weird. Is there something you're not telling me? Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter? What about the boy?" **

Everyone laughed. "Still here," Cam smirked and flashed his muscles. Daniel glared at him.

"**Shhh," Luce hissed into the phone. "Cam, wait," she called, holding the phone away from her mouth. He was already halfway out the door. "Just a second, I was"—she swallowed—"I was just getting off." **

**Cam slipped the pocket watch into the front of his black blazer and doubled back toward Luce. He raised his eyebrows and laughed when he heard Callie's voice growing louder from the earpiece. "Don't you dare hang up on me," Callie protested. "You've told me nothing. Nothing!" **

Everyone laughed. "Told you I liked this chick," Arriane said to Annabelle, who rolled her eyes.

"Alright, we don't want to doubt the Amazing Arri," Annabelle said.

"No, you don't!" Roland jumped in.

"**I don't want to piss anyone off," Cam joked, gesturing at the barking telephone. "Take my slot, you can get me back another time." **

"**No," Luce said quickly. As badly as she wanted to keep talking to Callie, she imagined Cam probably felt the same way about whomever he'd come here to call. And unlike a lot of the people at this school, Cam had been nothing but nice to her. **

Daniel snorted. Luce wondered why. And so did Penn.

**She didn't want to make him give up his turn at the telephone, especially now, when she'd be way too nervous to gossip with Callie about him. **

"**Callie," she said, sighing into the phone. "I gotta go. I'll call again as soon as—" But by then there was just the vague buzz of a dial tone in her ear. The phone itself had been rigged to cap each call at fifteen minutes. Now she saw the tiny timer blinking 0:00 on its base. They hadn't even gotten to say goodbye and now she'd have to wait another whole week to call. Time stretched out in Luce's mind like an endless gulf. **

Everyone agreed.

"**BFF?" Cam asked, leaning up against the cubby next to Luce. His dark eyebrows were still arched. "I've got three younger sisters, I can practically smell the best-friend vibe through the phone." He bent forward as if he was going to sniff Luce, which made her chuckle ... and then freeze. His unexpected closeness had made her heart pick up. **

"Why? You checking me out, Lucey?" Cam said, picking up his suave act and flashing his muscles again.

"No," Luce said, suppressing a smile. "What's there to check out?"

Everyone laughed. Even Cam. "Oh, Lucey Luce, you don't have to deny it." He winked again. He can't seem to get enough of his act.

"What's there to deny?" Daniel threw in. The others laughed even harder.

"Your heart," Cam said, smirking. A couple of 'Oohh's escaped the room, and Daniel's handsome face grew stony. He glared at Cam.

"**Let me guess." Cam straightened back up and lifted his chin. "She wanted to know all about the reform school bad boys?" **

"**No!" Luce shook her head to deny vehemently that guys were on her mind at all... until she realized Cam was only kidding. She blushed and took a stab at joking back. "I mean, I told her there's not a single good one here." **

"Except me," Cam and Daniel said simultaneously, each having the same cocky edge in it. They both scowled at each other, after.

**Cam blinked. "Precisely what makes it so exciting. Don't you think?" He had a way of standing very still, which made Luce stand very still, which made the ticking sound of the pocket watch inside his blazer seem louder than it possibly could have been. **

**Frozen next to Cam, Luce suddenly shivered as something black swooped into the hall. The shadow seemed to hopscotch across the panels in the ceiling in a very deliberate way, blacking out one and then the next and then the next. Damn. It was never good to be alone with someone—especially someone as focused on her as Cam was at the moment—when the shadows arrived. She could feel herself twitching, trying to appear calm as the darkness swirled around the ceiling fan in a dance. That alone she could have endured. Maybe. But the shadow was also making the worst of its terrible noises, a sound like the one Luce had heard when she'd watched a baby owl fall from its palmetto tree and choke to death. She wished Cam would just stop looking at her. She wished something would happen to divert his attention. She wished— **

**Daniel Grigori would walk in. **

"Mmhmm," Molly said. "Oh, how you switch boys so easily. Is there an alarm clock for these people? A schedule, perhaps?"

Everyone glowered at Molly, except Luce. She looked down, ashamed. Of course, the Ice Queen was right. She _was _switching boys, like they were her toys.

"Back _off_, Molly," Penn snapped. Everyone turned to look at her, shocked. She had _never _stood up to Molly, who, herself, even looked astounded. Penn stared at everyone, shocked that _they _were shocked. "What?" she asked them. "I'm just defending her," she said again, nudging Luce. Luce smiled at her thankfully.

**And then he did. Saved by the gorgeous boy wearing holey jeans and a holier white T-shirt. **

"Emphasis on the _gorgeous,_" Daniel said. Somehow, he caught Luce's eye at the corner of the room. She smiled at him.

He smiled back, a faint blush on his cheeks.

**He didn't look much like salvation—slouched over his heavy stack of library books, gray bags under his gray eyes. Daniel actually looked kind of wrecked. His blond hair drooped over his eyes, and when they settled on Luce and Cam, Luce watched them narrow. She was so busy fretting over what she'd done to annoy Daniel this time, she almost didn't realize the momentous thing that happened: The second before the lobby door closed behind him, the shadow slipped through it and into the night. It was like someone had taken a vacuum and cleared out all the grit from the hall. **

**Daniel just nodded in their direction and didn't slow down as he passed. **

"And the _oblivious _boy walks by," calls Roland.

"It's what he does best," Annabelle threw in.

"Of course. You guys underestimate me," Daniel said flatly.

"Not really."

"You're just really a being-underestimated kind of person."

"Like you," Daniel retorted.

"You wish."

**When Luce looked at Cam, he was watching Daniel. He turned to Luce and said, more loudly than he needed to, "I almost forgot to tell you. Having a little party in my room tonight after Social. I'd love for you to come." **

**Daniel was still within earshot. Luce had no idea what this Social thing was, but she was supposed to meet Penn beforehand. They were supposed to walk over together. **

Beside Luce, Penn smiled.

**Her eyes were fixed on the back of Daniel's head, and she knew she needed to answer Cam about his party, and it really shouldn't be so hard, but when Daniel turned around and looked back at her with eyes she swore were mournful, the phone behind her started ringing, and Cam reached for it and said, "I've got to take this, Luce. You'll be there?" **

**Almost imperceptibly, Daniel nodded. **

"**Yes," Luce told Cam. "Yes."**

"She did that because of me," Daniel said, smirking at Cam. He wasn't the cocky type, but he _definitely _could play the part. Cam was just _too _arrogant, thinking that he could steal the girl of his dreams just like Daniel had done in the past. But there was _no way _Daniel would let her out of his boundaries immediately.

Cam snorted. "She probably just wanted to confront you and say that you're a douche," he offered innocently.

* * *

"**I still don't see why we have to run," Luce was panting twenty minutes later. She was trying to keep up with Penn as they scrambled back across the commons toward the auditorium for the mysterious Wednesday Night Social, which Penn still hadn't explained. Luce had barely enough to time to make it upstairs to her room, to slick on lip gloss and her better jeans just in case it was that kind of social. She was still trying to slow her breath down from her run-in with Cam and Daniel when Penn barged into her room to drag her back out the door. **

"Literally?" Luce asked Penn.

Penn shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not sure if I _really _dragged your ass out back there, but something tells me that I might have." She winked and laughed.

"**People who are chronically tardy never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and normal," Penn told Luce as they splashed through a particularly soggy portion of the lawn. **

"**Ha!" A laugh erupted behind them. **

**Luce looked back and felt her face light up when she saw Arriane's pale, skinny frame jogging to catch up with them. "Which quack said you were normal, Penn?" **

"My mother!" Penn yelled at Arriane playfully. "And, for the record, she's _not _a quack!"

Roland laughed and slapped Arriane's back.

**Arriane nudged Luce and pointed down. "Watch out for the quicksand!" **

**Luce sloshed to a halt just before she'd have landed in a scarily muddy patch on the lawn. **

Everyone laughed. Most knew by experience that it absolutely _sucked _getting dirty and sloshed by the quick sand. It was disgusting, and what would be worst than having sticky sand stuck to your jeans on a _Social Night? _Now _that _was social suicide.

"**Somebody please tell me where we're going!" **

"**Wednesday night," Penn said flatly. "Social Night." **

"**Like ... a dance or something?" Luce asked, visions of Daniel and Cam already moving across the dance floor of her mind. **

Everyone cracked up, and blood filled Luce's cheeks. Her blush was embarrassing, and everyone seemed to know what a Social was except _her. _

"If only Socials were _that _entertaining," Cam said. He sighed.

**Arriane hooted. "A dance with death by boredom. The term 'social' is typical Sword Cross doublespeak. See, they're required to schedule social events for us, but they are also terrified of scheduling social events for us. Sticky predicky." **

"**So instead," Penn added, "they have these really awful events like movie nights followed by lectures about the movie, or—God, do you remember last semester?" **

"**There was that whole symposium on taxidermy?" **

"**So, so creepy." Penn shook her head. **

"**Tonight, my dear," Arriane drawled, "we get off easy. All we have to do is snore through one of the three movies on rotation in the Sword Cross video library. Which one do you think it'll be tonight, Pennyloafer? Starman? Joe Versus the Volcano? Or Weekend at Bernie's?" **

"**It's Starman." Penn groaned. **

**Arriane shot Luce a baffled look. "She knows everything." **

"Of course." Penn looked surprised that Arriane had to give Luce a baffled look. "I'm _Penn. _What do you expect? This is totally my nature."

"**Hold on," Luce said, tiptoeing around the quicksand and lowering her voice to a whisper as they approached the front office of the school. "If you've all seen these movies so many times, why the rush to get here?" **

**Penn pulled open the heavy metal doors to the "auditorium," which, Luce realized, was a euphemism for a regular old room with low, drop-paneled ceilings and chairs arranged to face a blank white wall. **

"**Don't want to get stuck in the hot seat next to Mr. Cole," Arriane explained, pointing at the teacher. His nose was buried deep inside a thick book, and he was surrounded by the few remaining empty chairs in the room. **

**As the three girls stepped through the metal detector at the door, Penn said, "Whoever sits there has to help pass out his weekly 'mental health' surveys." **

"Sounds weird," Luce said.

"Sounds _awful_," Penn said. She looked at Luce. "Trust me. You _never _want to get stuck there. I had to learn from experience."

"**Which wouldn't be so bad—" Arriane chimed in. **

"—**if you didn't have to stay late to analyze the findings," Penn finished. **

"**Thereby missing," Arriane said with a grin, steering Luce toward the second row as she whispered, "the after-party."**

**Finally they'd gotten down to the heart of the matter. Luce chuckled. **

"**I heard about that," she said, feeling slightly with it for a change. "It's in Cam's room, right?" **

**Arriane looked at Luce for a second and ran her tongue across her teeth. Then she looked past, almost through, Luce. "Hey, Todd," she called, waving with just the tips of her fingers. **

Cam raised an eyebrow. "Changing the topic, eh, Arri?"

Arriane winked. "You don't know _half _the things I do to avoid you, Cammy."

Cam glowered at her.

**She pushed Luce into one seat, claimed the safe spot next to her (still two seats down from Mr. Cole), and patted the hot seat. "Come sit with us, T-man!" **

Penn pointed a finger at Arriane. "_Mean." _

Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle cracked up. "Sorry, Pennyloafer," Arriane said in between breaths. "There's only so much newbies that I can handle." She shrugs.

"At least he's not here right now," Roland said, smacking Arriane's shoulder. "But, _damn_, Arriane, you make one _evil _badass."

Arriane scowled. "But I'm an angel!"

**Todd, who'd been shifting his weight in the doorway, looked immensely relieved to be given the directive, any directive. He started toward them, swallowing. No sooner had he fumbled into the seat than Mr. Cole looked up from his book, cleaned his glasses on his handkerchief, and said, "Todd, I'm glad you're here. I'm wondering if you can help me with a small favor after the film. You see, the Venn diagram is a very useful tool for..."**

"**Mean!" Penn popped her face up between Arriane and Luce. **

Everyone laughed.

**Arriane shrugged and produced a giant bag of popcorn from her carpetbag. "I can only look after so many new students," she said, tossing a buttery kernel at Luce. "Lucky you." **

**As the lights in the room dimmed, Luce looked around until her eyes landed on Cam. She thought about her abbreviated dish session on the phone with Callie, and how her friend always said that watching a movie with a guy was the best way to get to know things about him, things that might not come out in a conversation. Looking at Cam, Luce thought she knew what Callie meant: There would be something sort of thrilling about glancing out of the corner of her eye to see what jokes Cam thought were funny, to join his laughter with her own. **

Luce sighed. She wished the same about Trevor. She _used _to wish the same about Trevor. But now, like in the book, she was torn between two, _gorgeous _boys: Daniel and Cam. There were mysterious things about them, and that was what unusually attracted her the most.

**When his eyes met hers, Luce felt an embarrassed instinct to look away. But then, before she could, Cam's face lit up in a broad smile. It made her feel remarkably unabashed about being caught staring. When he put his hand up in a wave, Luce couldn't help thinking about how the exact opposite had happened the few times Daniel had caught her looking at him. **

Daniel and Luce sighed simultaneously. Both of them looked at each other. Daniel offered a smile, which Luce tentatively returned. But, even with the awkward exchange of breaths, they both felt relaxed now that they've had a short encounter.

Ish.

**Daniel rolled in with Roland, late enough that Randy had already taken a head count, late enough that the only remaining seats were on the floor at the front of the room. He passed through the beam of light from the projector and Luce noticed for the first time a silver chain around his neck, and some sort of medallion tucked inside his T-shirt. Then he dipped completely out of her view. She couldn't even see his profile. **

"Unfortunately," Daniel said under his breath.

**As it turned out, Starman wasn't very funny, but the other students' constant Jeff Bridges impersonations were. It was hard for Luce to stay focused on the plot. Plus, she was getting that uncomfortable icy feeling at the back of her neck. Something was about to happen. **

**When the shadows came this time, Luce was expecting them. Then she started to think about it and counted a tally on her fingers. The shadows had been popping up at an increasingly alarming rate, and Luce couldn't figure out whether she was just nervous at Sword Cross... or whether it meant something else. They'd never been this bad before... **

_Until I appeared, _Daniel thought glumly. _I have caused her so much. This is my fault. _

**They oozed overhead in the auditorium, then slithered along the sides of the movie screen, and finally traced the lines of the floorboards like spilled ink. Luce gripped the bottom of her chair and felt an ache of fear swell through her legs and arms. She tightened all the muscles in her body, but she couldn't keep from trembling. A squeeze on her left knee made her look over at Arriane. **

"**You okay?" Arriane mouthed. **

_Thank God for Arriane, _Cam said. He exchanged a look with Daniel-even if he was still mad at him-and they both had sullen looks on their faces. This was bad. Probably the first time Luce has ever seen the shadows.

Or Announcers.

**Luce nodded and hugged her shoulders, pretending she was merely cold. She wished she was, but this particular chill had nothing to do with Sword Cross's overzealous air conditioner. **

**She could feel the shadows tugging at her feet under her chair. They stayed like that, deadweight for the whole movie, and every minute dragged on like an eternity.**

**An hour later, Arriane pressed her eye up against the peephole of Cam's bronze-painted dorm room door. "Yoo-hoo," she sang, giggling. "The festivities are here!' **

**She produced a hot-pink feather boa from the same magic carpetbag the bag of popcorn had come from. "Give me a boost," she said to Luce, dangling her foot in the air. **

"So demanding," Cam muttered. Arriane shot him a look.

**Luce hooked her fingers together and positioned them under Arriane's black boot. She watched as Arriane pushed off the ground and used the boa to cover the face of the hallway surveillance camera while she reached around the back of the device and switched it off. **

"**That's not suspicious or anything," Penn said. **

"**Does your allegiance lie with the after-party?" Arriane shot back. "Or the red party?" **

"**I'm just saying there are smarter ways." Penn snorted as Arriane hopped down. Arriane slung the boa over Luce's shoulders, and Luce laughed and started to shimmy to the Motown song they could hear through the door. But when Luce offered the boa to Penn for a turn, she was surprised to see her still looking nervous. Penn was biting her nails and sweating at the brow. Penn wore six sweaters in the swampy southern September heat—she was never hot. **

"**What's wrong?" Luce whispered, leaning in. **

"That's not my type of scenario," Penn explained. She looked uncomfortable. "I've never really been invited to an extravagant party of some sort."

Luce nodded. Penn was uncomfortable enough for Luce to get the message to leave her alone.

**Penn picked at the hem of her sleeve and shrugged. She looked like she was just about to answer when the door behind them opened up. A whoosh of cigarette smoke, blasting music, and suddenly Cam's open arms greeted them. **

"**You made it," he said, smiling at Luce. Even in the dim light, his lips had a berry-stained glow. When he folded her in for a hug, she felt tiny and safe. It lasted only a second; then he turned to nod hello at the other two girls, and Luce felt a little proud to have been the one who got the hug. **

**Behind Cam, the small, dark room was crammed with people. Roland was in one corner, at the turntable, holding up records to a black light. The couple Luce had seen on the quad a few days before cozied up against the window. The preppy boys with the white oxford shirts were all huddled up together, occasionally checking out the girls. Arriane wasted no time shooting across the room toward Cam's desk, which looked like it was doubling as a bar. Almost immediately, she had a champagne bottle between her legs and was laughing as she tried to pry off the cork. **

"Typical Arri," Roland said as he grinned. Luce still wondered if they were _together-together _or something.

"Get a room!" Annabelle hooted in Arriane's ear.

They probably were.

**Luce was baffled. She hadn't even known how to get booze at Dover, where the outside world had been a lot less off-limits. Cam had been back at Sword Cross for only a few days, but already, he seemed to know how to smuggle everything he needed to throw a Dionysian soirée the entire school showed up to. And somehow everyone else inside thought this was normal. **

"Oh, it _is _normal," Roland said, winking at Luce. "Thanks to me."

Cam nodded. "Anything you want, anything you _need, _ask Roland and he'll smuggle it in the school for you."

Luce gulped. "Like?"

Annabelle and Arriane looked at each other. "Condoms!" they yelled and cracked up. So did everyone else.

**Still standing at the threshold, she heard the pop, then the cheers from the rest of the crowd, then Arriane's voice calling out: "Lucindaaa, get in here. I'm about to make a toast." **

**Luce could feel the party's magnetism, but Penn looked much less ready to budge. **

"**You go ahead," she said, waving a hand at Luce. **

"**What's wrong? You don't want to go in?" The truth was, Luce was a little nervous herself. She had no idea what might go down at these things, and since she still wasn't sure how reliable Arriane was, it would definitely make her feel better to have Penn at her side. **

**But Penn frowned. "I'm... I'm out of my element. I do libraries... workshops on how to use PowerPoint. You want a file hacked into, I'm your girl. But this—" She stood on tiptoes and peered into the room. "I don't know. People in there just think I'm some kind of know-it-all." **

"Then just _chill _and go with the flow, girl!" Arriane yelled.

"Easier said than done," Penn said.

**Luce attempted her best give-me-a-break frown. "And they think I'm a slab of meat loaf, and we think they're all totally bananas." She laughed. **

They laughed.

"**Can't we all just get along?" Slowly Penn curled her lip, then took the feather boa and draped it around her shoulders. "Oh, all right," she said, clomping inside ahead of Luce.**

**Luce blinked as her eyes adjusted. A cacophony filled the room, but she could hear Arriane's laughing voice. Cam shut the door behind her and tugged Luce's hand so she'd hang back, away from the heart of the party. **

"**I'm really glad you came," he said, putting his hand on the small of her back and bending his head so she could hear him in the loud room. Those lips looked almost tasty, especially when they said things like "I jumped up every time someone knocked, hoping it'd be you." **

Luce could feel the blush creeping up her cheeks. At the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel glaring at Cam. _What is with these guys? _Luce thought to herself.

**Whatever had drawn Cam to her so quickly, Luce didn't want to do anything to mess it up. He was popular and unexpectedly thoughtful, and his attention made her feel more than flattered. It made her feel more comfortable in this strange new place. She knew if she tried to respond to his compliment, she'd stumble over the words. So she just laughed, which made him laugh, and then he pulled her in for another hug. **

**Suddenly there was no place to put her own hands but around his neck. She felt a little light-headed as Cam squeezed her, lifting her feet slightly off the ground. **

She blushed harder this time.

**When he put her back down, Luce turned to the rest of the party, and the first thing she saw was Daniel. But she didn't think he liked Cam. Still, he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his white T-shirt glowing violet in the black light. As soon as her eyes found him, it was hard to look anywhere else. Which didn't make sense, because a gorgeous and friendly guy was standing right behind her, asking her what she'd like to drink. The other gorgeous, infinitely less friendly guy sitting across from her should not be the one she couldn't stop looking at. And he was staring at her. So intently, with a cryptic, squinting look in his eyes that Luce thought she'd never decode, even if she saw it a thousand times. **

"There _is _something weird about his eyes," Arriane muttered.

"They're weirdly gray," Annabelle agreed.

"And dull," Roland said.

Daniel punched Roland's arm as he laughed. They looked like two brothers joking with each other. They were both laughing and punching, and everyone was smiling just looking at them. They were both... _happy. _

Luce just doesn't know why it feels like such an odd feeling for her to see Daniel happy.

**All she knew was the effect it had on her. Everyone else in the room went out of focus and she melted. She could have stared back all night if it hadn't been for Arriane, who had climbed on top of the desk and called out to Luce, her glass raised in the air. **

"**To Luce," she toasted, giving Luce a saintly smile. "Who was obviously zoning and missed my entire welcome speech and who will never know how utterly fabulous it was— wasn't it fabulous, Ro?" she leaned down to ask Roland, who patted her ankle affirmatively. **

"You better think it was fabulous," Arriane growled.

Roland held up his hands. "Relax, I _do._"

**Cam slipped a plastic cup of champagne into Luce's hand. She blushed and tried to laugh it off as the whole rest of the party echoed, "To Luce! To Meat Loaf!" **

**At her side, Molly slithered up and whispered a shorter version in her ear: "To Luce, who will never know." **

Everyone rolled their eyes and glared-or scowled-at Molly. Neither of their gazes made the Ice Queen flinch; neither of their gazes made her jaw twitch. She was unusually unaffected, like she has dealed with these situations before.

Luce gestured for Annabelle to continue reading.

**A few days before, Luce would have flinched away. Tonight, she simply rolled her eyes, then turned her back on Molly. The girl had never said a word that didn't leave Luce feeling bitten, but showing it seemed only to egg her on. So Luce just hunkered down to share the desk chair with Penn, who handed her a rope of black licorice. **

"**Can you believe it? I think I'm actually having fun," Penn said, chewing happily. **

"Of course you will!" Cam exclaimed. "It's my party!"

Arriane rolled her eyes. "Not _all _your parties are fun. Just most of 'em, cause you're _popular._"

Cam grinned. "Exactly."

**Luce bit down on the licorice and took a tiny sip of the fizzy champagne. Not a very palatable combination. Kind of like her and Molly. "So is Molly that evil to everyone, or am I a special case?" **

**For a second Penn looked like she was going to give a different answer, but then she patted Luce on the back. "Just her usual charming demeanor, my dear." **

Across Luce, Molly snorts.

**Luce looked around the room at all the free-flowing champagne, at Cam's fancy vintage turntable, at the disco ball spinning over their heads, casting stars on everyone's faces. **

"**Where do they get all this stuff?" she wondered aloud. **

"**People say Roland can smuggle anything into Sword Cross," Penn said matter-of-factly. "Not that I've ever asked him." **

"But, oh," Roland said to Penn, "You can. Your wish is my command."

Cam nods again. "Ro is like a genie."

Arriane snorts. "A really ugly genie."

Annabelle and Arriane crack up again, and Roland chuckles, too.

**Maybe this was what Arriane meant when she said Roland knew how to get things. The only off-limits item Luce could imagine wanting badly enough to ask about was a cell phone. But then... Cam had said not to listen to Arriane about the inner workings of the school.**

"Well, don't believe him!" Arriane said, playfully scowling at Luce.

Luce smiled at her. "Don't worry. I _don't._" She looked at Cam and smirked playfully. Cam gasped, teasing and faking.

**Which would have been fine, except so much of his party seemed to be courtesy of Roland. The more she tried to untangle her questions, the less things added up. She should probably stick to being just "in" enough to get invited to the parties. **

"**Okay, all you rejects," Roland said loudly to get everyone's attention. The record player had quieted down to the static between songs. "We're going to start the open-mike portion of the night, and I'm taking requests for karaoke." **

"**Daniel Grigori!" Arriane hooted through her hands.**

"**No!" Daniel hooted back without missing a beat. **

"**Aww, the silent Grigori sits another one out," Roland said into the microphone. "You sure you don't want to do your version of 'Hellhound on My Trail'?" **

"**I believe that's your song, Roland," Daniel said. A faint smile spread across his lips, but Luce got the feeling it was an embarrassed smile, a someone-else-take-the-spotlight-please smile. **

"It probably was," Daniel agrees. He looks straight on at Luce, and right now, she looks like the most beautiful person he's ever seen.

As usual.

"Why?" she asks him curiously.

It is wrong to lead her on, to keep talking to her. But he must be in a good mood today, because he replies. "I don't like being in the spotlight."

"Except when _she's _there," Roland whispers to Daniel. He laughs quietly.

Luce only smiles, like she knows what he feels like. His heart soars a little bit.

"**He's got a point, folks." Roland laughed. "Though karaoke-ing Robert Johnson has been known to clear out a room." He plucked an R. L. Burnside album from the stack and cued the record player in the corner. "Let's go down south instead." **

**As the bass notes of an electric guitar picked up, Roland took center stage, which was really just a few square feet of moonlit empty space in the middle of the room. Everyone else was clapping or stomping their feet in time, but Daniel was looking down at his watch. She kept seeing the image of him nodding at her in the lobby earlier that night, when Cam invited her to the party. Like Daniel wanted her there for some reason. Of course, now that she'd shown up, he made no move to acknowledge her existence. **

**If only she could get him alone.**

"It's hard to get the famous Grigori alone," Annabelle admitted.

"Yup," Roland says. "He sneaks out in his special place sometimes."

**Roland so monopolized the attention of the guests that only Luce noticed when, midway through the song, Daniel stood up, edged himself around Molly and Cam, and slipped silently out the door. **

**This was her chance. While everyone around her was applauding, Luce slowly got to her feet. **

"**Encore!" Arriane called out. Then, noticing Luce rising from her chair, she said, "Oh, snap, is that my girl stepping up to sing?" **

_Oh no. _"I suck at singing!" Luce babbled suddenly. She suddenly felt embarrassed.

But Penn only smiles. "A lot of us do."

"Especially Roland!" Arriane hooted.

Luce felt glad as the conversation went on. She was glad that they were all mounting all the spotlight away from her so she could stare at 'the famous Grigori'.

And he was staring back.

"**No!" Luce did not want to sing in front of this roomful of people any more than she wanted to admit the real reason why she was standing up. But there she was, standing right in the middle of her first party at Sword Cross, with Roland thrusting the mike under her chin. Now what? **

"**I—I just feel bad for, uh, Todd. That he's missing out." Luce's voiced echoed back to her over the speakers. She was already regretting her bad lie, and the fact that there was no turning back now. "I thought I'd run down and see if he's done with Mr. Cole." **

**None of the other kids seemed to know quite what to do with this. Only Penn called out timidly, "Hurry back!" **

**Molly was smirking down her nose at Luce. "Geek love," she said, fake-swooning. "So romantic." **

As usual, as if on cue, everyone glared at Molly, and this time, she laughed.

"Oh, who cares? You all know it's true." She looked at Luce. "Isn't it, _Lucey?_"

Luce refused to let Molly stare down at her. So she stared back, with equal iciness and venom lacing the glare. She was, technically, making an act of defiance against the Ice Queen. The thought makes her smile.

**Wait, did they think she liked Todd? Oh, who cared—the one person Luce would really not want thinking that was the one person she'd been trying to follow outside. **

Daniel inwardly smiled. Cam's heart crushed a little on the inside.

**Ignoring Molly, Luce scooted toward the door, where Cam met her with crossed arms. "Want company?" he asked hopefully. **

**She shook her head. On any other errand, she probably would have wanted Cam's company. But not right now. **

"**I'll be right back," she said brightly. Before she could register the disappointment on his face, she slinked out into the hall. **

Disappointment was now visible on Cam's face. Luce knew, but she couldn't bear to look at him.

**After the roar of the party, the quiet rang in her ears. It took a second before she could make out hushed voices just around the corner. **

**Daniel. She'd recognize his voice anywhere. But she was less certain who he was talking to. A girl. **

"**Ah'm sorrrry," whoever she was said... with a distinctive southern twang. **

"Gabbe?" They all looked at the goddess who was unmistakably chewing gum and staring off into space.

"Huh? What did I miss?" She scrambled in her seat, looking at the others obliviously.

"You weren't listening?" Annabelle said, beside her.

"Oh! Ah'm sorrrrry," Gabbe said the same way she has probably said in the book. "I was just on an assignment. Continue, please."

Annabelle nodded.

**Gabbe? Daniel had been sneaking out to see blond and airbrushed Gabbe? **

"**It won't happen again," Gabbe continued, "I swear to—" **

"**It can't happen again," Daniel whispered, but his tone practically screamed lovers' quarrel. **

Daniel fake gagged. "_Lovers' quarrel? Are you kidding me?"_

Luce blushed and stammered. "S-sorry, I d-didn't know.." She trailed off.

The others were suppressing giggles, but managed to keep half-straight faces. They were trying _not _to imagine Gabbe and Daniel _making out. _Just the thought of it was totally ridiculous for all of them!

Gabbe, however, frowned deeply and scowled a little bit. A tiny little bit for her _not _to get a wrinkle.

"**You promised you'd be there, and you weren't." **

**Where? When? Luce was in agony. She inched along the hallway, trying not to make a sound. **

**But the two of them had fallen silent. Luce could picture Daniel taking Gabbe's hands in his. Could picture him leaning in to her for a long, deep kiss. A sheet of all-consuming envy spread across Luce's chest. Around the corner, one of them sighed. **

_This is so embarrassing, _Luce thought, the blush still evident on her cheeks. _I can't believe I thought of this! I must be pretty crazy over Daniel for me to think this insane. _

"**You're going to have to trust me, honey," she heard Gabbe say, in a saccharine voice that made Luce decide once and for all that she hated her. "I'm the only one you've got."**

* * *

A/N: One chapter down, how many more to go?

#icanstilldothis HAHA :)


	8. Another Freaking Note

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

yes i have been busy.

yes you can get mad at me.

yes you can blame me and say bad words/things about me.

yes you can spit on me.

yes you can kill me emotionally.

but no, i haven't given up on this story.


	9. No Salvation

Hey guys!

Okay in my previous note, i told you i wasn't going to give up on this story right? Well, HERE IT IS! what you've been waiting for!

btw: in one of my reviews, a 'Guest' said "B you have to continue i love this fanfic:)" and i'm just curious: who's this B? 'Guest', please do tell? :D

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fallen.**

* * *

Arriane poked Roland, and leaned in close to him. "Guess who's next?" she squealed.

Roland rolled his eyes, but smiled. "Um.. me?" he said teasingly.

Arriane slapped his shoulder. "No, doofus! It's me! Are you blind?"

Everyone started laughing or smiling as Arriane began to rant about Roland's foolishness and teasing attitude. "You know, your jokes are getting really old! They're starting to suck! Can't you get over them? Like I can't _believe _that I have to deal with you forever..."

A small giggle escaped Luce and even Roland himself was pursing his lips together, trying not to let the smile escape. He failed miserably, though, and laughed shortly.

"And now you're laughing at me? _At me? _I don't know what your problem is, Ro, but I'm going to-"

Arriane was cut short by the hand Roland held over her mouth. "Okay, Ari!" he said, smiling. "Read the chapter already, and you can rant later."

Arriane scowled, but she did as he said. "**SIX**," she said. "**NO SALVATION**."

"Title sounds creepy," Roland muttered. Daniel nodded, agreeing.

**Bright and early Thursday morning, a loudspeaker crackled to life in the hallway outside Luce's room:**

**"Attention, Sword & Crosstians!"**

Luce snorted. Everyone turned to her questioningly, and she merely shrugged. "What? It's a little weird, don't you think? Crosstians?"

Annabelle smiled. "Yeah, it may be pretty weird," she said. "But I guess we just dealt with it. Besides, what can we do about it?"

Molly smirked at Luce. She barely saw it.

**Luce rolled over with a groan, but as hard as she crammed the pillow around her ears, it did little to block out Randy's bark over the PA.**

**"You have exactly nine minutes to report to the gymnasium for your annual fitness examination. As you know, we take a dim view of stragglers, so be prompt and be ready for bodily assessment."**

_What does that even mean? _Luce thought. It was odd to have a 'bodily assessment' this early in the morning.

**Fitness examination? Bodily assessment? At six-thirty in the morning? Luce had alreadybeen regretting staying out so late last night . . . and staying up so much later lying in bed, stressing.**

**Right around the time she started imagining Daniela and Gabbe kissing,**

Gabbe fake-gagged and Daniel looked like he wanted to gouge his eyes out. Everyone else started cracking up at Daniel's expression. You have to admit, it is funny. Daniel rubbed his eyes. "I think I was scarred for life," he said softly.

Gabbe nodded. "There is _nothing _between us, okay?" she told everyone, her eyes lingering an extra second on Luce.

She nodded.

**Luce had begun to feel queasy-that specific kind of queasiness that came from knowing she'd made a fool of herself. There was no going back to the party. There was only prying herself off the wall and slinking back to her dorm room to second-guess that strange feeling she got around Daniel, the one she'd foolishly taken as some sort of connection. She'd woken up with a bad taste of the party's aftermath still in her mouth. The last thing she wanted to think about now was fitness.**

**She swung her feet off the bed and onto the cold vinyl floor. Brushing her teeth, she tried to picture what Sword & Cross might mean by "bodily assessment". Intimidating images of her fellow students-Molly doing dozens of mean chin-ups, Gabbe effortlessly ascending a thirty-foot rope toward the sky-flooded her mind.**

There was a pause when everyone was trying to digest Luce's thoughts in the book. Then when they all looked at each other, they cracked up.

Arriane and Roland were howling with laughter, and even Molly was clutching her stomach. Daniel and Cam were looking at each other and cracking up like old friends. Gabbe was trying not to laugh too hard-she was too modest. And Penn, oh Penn, was snorting viciously.

When everyone finally began to calm down, Luce asked, "Was it something I said?"

They laughed again, but shorter this time. "Oh, no" Daniel said, smiling. "Your predictions are just too extreme, that's all."

**Her only shot at not making a fool of herself-again-was to try to put Daniel and Gabbe out of her mind.**

Cam frowned. _She gets jealous so easily, _he thought.

Daniel's mind wandered. _How can she think that I like Gabbe? _he wondered. _Very odd._

**She crossed the south said of campus to the gymnasium. It was a large Gothic structure with flying buttresses and fieldstone turrets that made it look more like a church than a place where one would go to break a sweat. As Luce approached the building, the layer of kudzu coating its facade rustled in the morning breeze.**

**"Penn," Luce called out, spotting her tracksuit-clad friend lacing up her sneakers on a bench. Luce looked down at her regulation black clothes and black boots and suddenly panicked that she'd missed some memo about dress code. But then, some of the other students were loitering outside the building and none of them looked much different than she did.**

**Penn's eyes were groggy. "So beat," she moaned. "I karaoke'd way too hard last night. Thought I'd compensate by trying to at least look athletic."**

Everyone laughed and Luce smiled. "So that's why you're the only one who's dressed up for this," she told Penn.

Penn shrugged. "Like I said, I at least tried to look athletic."

"You _tried_," Molly emphasized.

Everyone just rolled her eyes at her. Molly huffed and leaned back in her seat. No one got here humor.

**Luce laughed as Penn fumbled with the double knot on her shoe.**

**"What happened to you last night, anyway?" Penn asked. "You never came back to the party."**

**"Oh," Luce said, stalling. "I decided to—"**

**"Gaaahh." Penn covered her ears. "Every sound is like a jackhammer in my brain. Tell me later?"**

**"Yeah," Luce said. "Sure."**

Cam leaned in close to Luce's ear. She almost flinched when she heard him whispering. "Sounds like you're using Penn's headache to an advantage, Miss Price," he said quietly.

Luce smiled. "Don't tell her that."

**The double doors to the gym were thrust open. Randy stepped out in heavy rubber clogs, holding her ever-present clipboard. She waved the students forward, and one by one they filed past to be assigned their fitness station.**

**"Todd Hammond," Randy called as the wobbly-kneed kid approached. Todd's shoulders caved forward like parentheses, and Luce could see remnants of a serious farmer's tan on the back of his neck.**

**"Weights," Randy commanded, chucking Todd inside.**

**"Pennyweather Van Syckle-Lockwood," she bellowed next, causing Penn to cower and press her palms against her ears again. **

Luce wished a silent _Good luck _to Penn in her mind. She hoped Penn would at least be assigned to something less hard.

**"Pool," Randy instructed, reaching into a cardboard box behind her and tossing Penn a red one-piece Speedo racer-back.**

**"Lucinda Price," Randy continued, after consulting her list. Luce stepped forward and was relieved when Randy said, "Also pool." Luce reached up to catch the one-piece bathing suit in the air. It was stretched out and thin as a piece of parchment between her fingers. At least it smelled clean. Sort of.**

Everyone snorted.

**"Gabrielle Givens," Randy said next, and Luce whipped around to see her new least-favorite person sashay up in short black shorts and a thin black tank top. She'd been at this school for three days… how had she already gotten Daniel?**

"I told you, hun," Gabbe interfered Arriane's reading with her Southern t'wang. "I didn't get him. I don't even like him!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "How can you like that _thing_?" Gabbe questioned teasingly.

Luce smiled and said sheepishly, "Sorry."

Gabbe grinned and waved a hand for Arriane to continue.

**"Hiii, Randy," Gabbe said, drawing out the words with a twang that made Luce want to pull a Penn and cover her own ears.**

Everyone laughed.

**Anything but pool, Luce willed. Anything but pool.**

**"Pool," Randy said.**

_Tsk, tsk, _Molly thought. _Someone's unlucky._

**Walking next to Penn toward the girls' locker room, Luce tried to avoid looking back at Gabbe, who twirled what seemed to be the only fashionable bathing suit in the stack around her French-manicured index finger. Instead, Luce focused on the gray stone walls and the old religious paraphernalia covering them. She walked past ornately carved wooden crosses with their bas-relief depictions of the Passion. A series of faded triptychs hung at eye level, with only the orbs of the figures' halos still aglow. Luce leaned forward to get a better look at a large scroll written in Latin, encased in glass.**

**"Uplifting decor, isn't it?" Penn asked, throwing back a couple of aspirin with a swig of water from her bag.**

**"What is all this stuff?" Luce asked.**

**"Ancient history. The only surviving relics from when this place was still the site of Sunday Mass, back in Civil War days."**

_Civil War days? _Luce thought. _This school must be really old! _

Penn looked at Luce. _I'm guessing that she's thinking about how old this school is..._

**"That explains why it looks so much like a church," Luce said, pausing in front of a marble reproduction of Michelangelo's pieta.**

**"Like everything else in this hellhole, they did a totally half-assed job of updating it. I mean, who builds a pool in the middle of an old church?"**

_You've got to be kidding me, _Luce thought. A pool inside a _church? _And what is the pool filled with: holy water? She looked around and waited for someone to deny it, but no one said a word. They just looked at Arriane.

**"You're joking," Luce said.**

**"I wish." Penn rolled her eyes. "Every summer, the headmaster gets it in his little mind to try and stick me with the task of redecorating this place. He won't admit it, but all the God stuff really freaks him out," she said. **

A few people cracked smiles. Others grinned.

**"Problem is, even if I did feel like pitching in, I'd have no idea what to do with all this junk, or even how to clear it out without offending, like, everyone and God."**

Now, everyone-including Luce, mind you-laughed.

**Luce thought back to the immaculate white walls inside Dover's gymnasium, row after row of professionally shot varsity championship pictures, each matted with the same navy card stock, each showcased in a matching golden frame. The only hallway more hallowed at Dover was its entryway, which was where all the alumni-turned-state-senators and Guggenheim fellowship winners and run-of-the-mill billionaires displayed their head shots.**

**"You could hang all the current alumni's mug shots," Gabbe offered from behind them.**

**Luce started to laugh—it was funny… and strange, almost like Gabbe had just read her mind—but then she remembered the girl's voice the night before, telling Daniel she was the only one he had. Luce quickly swallowed any notion of a connection with her.**

Gabbe and Daniel sighed at the same time, then turned to glare at each other. Luce smiled. "Hey, no need for the glaring contest. I didn't know that you weren't like _that _in the book."

Cam nodded. "She's right guys," he said. "Well, we're kind of stuck with each other right now, so no more staring downs, okay?"

Luce smiled at Cam's thoughtfulness and nodded. Daniel and Gabbe nodded. "You're the boss," Daniel joked.

Cam laughed and all the tension was gone from the room. Luce exhaled.

**"You're straggling!" yelled an unknown gym coach, appearing from nowhere. She—at least Luce thought she was a she—had a frizzy wad of brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, calves like ham hocks, and yellowing invisible braces covering her top teeth. She hustled the girls angrily into a locker room, where each was given a padlock with a key and directed toward an empty locker with a shove. "Nobody straggles on Coach Diante's watch."**

_What a scary teacher, _Luce though, and absentmindly massaged her temples. She was tired, and she half-wanted to go home. But she knew that she was there with the other people for a reason, and that she'd have to stay. Whether she liked it or not.

**Luce and Penn scrambled into their faded, baggy bathing suits. Luce shuddered at her reflection in the mirror, then covered as much of herself as she could with her towel.**

**Inside the humid natatorium, she instantly understood what Penn was talking about. The pool itself was giant, Olympic-sized, one of the few state-of-the-art features she'd encountered so far on this campus. But that wasn't what made it remarkable. Luce realized in awe. This pool had been set down right in the middle of what used to be a massive church.**

"It's weird," Penn said. "But no one objected to it in the past few years I've been in the school so.." She shrugged. "It stayed."

**There was a row of pretty stained-glass windows, with only a few broken panels, spanning the walls near the high, arched ceiling. There were candlelit stone niches along the wall. A diving board had been installed where the altar probably used to be. If Luce had not been raised agnostic, but rather as a God-fearing churchgoer, like the rest of her friends in elementary school, she might have thought this place was sacrilegious.**

A few people nodded, agreeing with Luce's thoughts in the book.

**Some of the other students were already in the water, gasping for air as they completed their laps. But it was the students who weren't in the water who held Luce's attention. Molly, Roland, and Arriane were all spread out on the bleachers along the wall. They were cracking up about something. Roland was practically doubled over, and Arriane was wiping away tears. They were in much more attractive bathing suits than Luce, but not one of them looked like they had any intention of making a move toward the pool.**

Roland flipped his dreads, hitting Daniel square in the face. He stood up and showed off his biceps and muscles. "Well, what can I say, ladies?" he said, winking at the girls. "I look attractive in _anything._"

Arriane stood up too, handing the book to Annabelle for a second. Ari pushed Roland, and he almost fell on Daniel, who scowled. "Ro, get your facts straight! You don't look attractive. You just wish you were, like me." She grinned at her 'audience'.

The two began bickering playfully, while everyone laughing contained their laughter. Except Daniel. He was still annoyed that Dreadlock Dude whipped him in the face. And that Luce saw it.

Finally, the two settled down and Arriane took the book from Annabelle. She began to read when Roland suddenly turned to Daniel.

"So was my hair soft, or what?"

Daniel rolled his eyes.

**Luce picked at her saggy one-piece. She wanted to go join Arriane—but just as she was weighing the pros (possible entrance into an elite world) and cons (Coach Diante berating her as a conscientious objector to exercise), Gabbe sauntered over to the group. Like she was already best friends with all of them. She took a seat right next to Arriane and immediately started laughing, too, like whatever the joke was, she already got it.**

**"They always have notes to sit out," Penn explained, glaring at the popular crowd on the bleachers. "Don't ask me how they get away with it."**

Luce looked at Penn questioningly. Penn just shrugged._ I'm sorry that it sounds awful, but it's true, _she thought. _It's crazy how they know they can do these things._

Arriane glanced at Penn pityingly and sorrowfully. Then she looked away, before Penn could see.

**Luce hemmed and hawed at the side of the pool, unable to tune in to Coach Diante's instructions. Seeing Gabbe et al. clustered on the bleachers cool-kids-style made Luce wish that Cam were there. She could picture him looking buff in a sleek black bathing suit, waving her over to the crew with his big smile, making her feel immediately welcome, even important.**

Cam grinned and looked at Luce. He winked. "I'm available anytime, baby," he said.

Daniel looked down in jealousy. He wasn't mad at Cam, why would he be? Cam was just fooling around. He just fell head over heels for Luce. And Daniel didn't like how she was his seatmate: it made him terribly jealous. He only wished that Luce was beside him. Daniel looked up and stared at Luce. Her cheeks were reddening, and despite his jealousy, Daniel smiled. _She still looks beautiful, _Daniel thought.

**Luce felt a gnawing need to apologize for ducking out of his party early. Which was strange—they weren't together, so it wasn't like Luce was obligated to explain her comings and goings to Cam. But at the same time, she liked it when he paid attention to her. She liked the way he smelled—kind of free and open, like driving with the windows down at night. She liked the way he tuned in to her completely when she talked, holding still like he couldn't see or hear anyone but her. She'd even liked being lifted off her feet at the party, in plain view of Daniel. She didn't want to do anything to make Cam reconsider the way he treated her.**

Luce agreed with her thoughts in the book. It was actually true, the way she felt. Cam made her feel happy and carefree; she didn't care about anything when she was with him. He made her feel special. _But he doesn't make me feel the same way about Daniel, _Luce thought. _He's no Daniel._

**When the coach's whistle blew, a very startled Luce stood straight up, then looked down regretfully as Penn and the other students near her all jumped forward, into the pool.**

**She looked to Coach Diante for guidance.**

**"You must be Lucinda Price—always late and never listens?" Coach sighed. "Randy told me about you. It's eight laps, pick your best stroke."**

**Luce nodded and stood with her toes curled over the edge. She used to love to swim. When her dad taught her how at the Thunderbolt community pool, she'd even been given an award as youngest kid ever to brave the deep end without floaties. But that was years ago. Luce couldn't even remember the last time she'd swum. The heated outdoor Dover pool had always sparkled, tempting her—but it was closed to anyone who wasn't on the swim team.**

"If you love swimming so much, why don't you join the swimm team?" asked Molly. There was no hatred in her voice, just a little bit of suspicion... and curiousity.

Luce shrugged. "Too much work, I guess, and..." Luce thought about it for a while. "I don't know."

Molly looked at Luce curiously, and Luce realized that every eye in the room was trained on both of them. She shrunk in her seat a bit, but never looked down. Finally, Molly nodded and Arriane continued.

**Coach Diante cleared her throat. "Maybe you didn't catch that this is a race… and you're already losing."**

**This was the most pathetic and ridiculous race that Luce had ever seen, but it didn't stop her competitive edge from coming out.**

**"And… you're still losing," Coach said, chewing on her whistle.**

Some snickered.

**"Not for long," Luce said.**

**She checked out the competition. The guy to her left was sputtering water out of his mouth and doing a clumsy freestyle. On her right, a nose-plugged Penn was leisurely gliding along, her stomach resting on a pink foam kickboard. For a split second, Luce glanced at the crowd on the bleachers. Molly and Roland were watching; Arriane and Gabbe were collapsed on each other in an annoying fit of giggles.**

Arriane and Gabbe exchanged a look, then they looked at Luce, pouting. Immediately, Gabbe had crocodile tears swimming in her eyes.

"You think we're annoying?" Arriane asked in a baby voice.

But before Luce could respond, Annabelle smacked Arriane's head, and she lost her character. "Hey! What gives?" she demanded.

Annabelle groaned. "Get on with it already! I want to sleep," she said gruffily.

Arriane shrugged, totally forgeting her character, and read the book.

**But she didn't care what they were laughing at. Sort of. She was off.**

**With her arms bowed over her head, Luce dove in, feeling her back arch as she glided into the crisp water. Few people could do it really well, her dad once explained to an eight-year-old Luce at the pool. But once you perfected the butterfly stroke, there was no way to move faster in the water.**

**Letting her aggravation propel her forward. Luce lifted her upper body out of the water. The movement came right back to her and she started to beat her arms like wings. She swam harder than she'd done anything in a long, long time. Feeling vindicated, she lapped the other swimmers once, then again.**

**She was nearing the end of her eighth lap when her head popped above water just long enough to hear Gabbe's slow voice say, "Daniel."**

Everyone turned to look at Gabbe suspiciously, even Daniel himself. She scowled and said, "What did I do?"

"What're you up to?" asked a suspicious Penn.

Gabbe sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "How am I supposed to know? I'm not in the book, am I?"

"No, but your face will be if you don't answer our question," Cam said coldly.

Everyone stared at Cam oddly, not believing for a second that Cam _would _smash Gabbe's face on the book. After a while, Cam broke his cold expression and grinned.

"Did any of you believed that I would actually do that?" Cam asked, and laughed, chortling until everyone glared at him.

"No," Roland said and turned to Ari.

**Like a snuffed-out candle, Luce's momentum disappeared. She put her feet down and waited to see what else Gabbe had to say. Unfortunately, she couldn't hear anything other than a raucous splashing and, a moment later, the whistle.**

**"And the winner is," Coach Diante said with a stunned expression, "Joel Bland." The skinny kid with braces from the next lane over hopped out of the pool and started raising the roof to celebrate his victory.**

**In the next lane, Penn kicked to a stop. "What happened?" she asked Luce. "You were totally killing him."**

_Well, I got a little distracted, _Luce tried to say mentally to Penn. She knew it was stupid, but Luce felt like she and Penn had some sort of connection. Like they were sisters. Best friends and sisters.

**Luce shrugged. Gabbe was what had happened, but when she looked over at the bleachers, Gabbe was gone, and Arriane and Molly were gone with her. Roland alone remained where the crowd had been, and he was immersed in a book.**

**Luce's adrenaline had been building while she swam, but now she'd crashed so hard, Penn had to help her out of the pool.**

**Luce watched Roland hop down from the bleachers. "You were pretty good out there," he said, tossing her a towel and the locker room key she'd lost track of. "For a little while."**

"Ouch, Ro," Arriane said, clutching a hand over her heart. "That must've hurt."

Roland smiled sheepishly, and Cam glared at him as he turned to Luce. "Sorry," he said sheepishly.

Luce stuck a tongue out, but nodded. "Whatever," she said as she grinned.

**Luce caught the key in midair and wrapped the towel around her. But before she could say something normal, like "Thanks for the towel," or "Guess I'm just out of shape," this weird new hotheaded side of her instead blurted out, "Are Daniel and Gabbe together or what?"**

"Oooooh," Annabelle said, speaking up. "Bad move. Everything you say to Roland spreads like wild fire. Bad move," she repeated.

Roland swatted her arm over Arriane. "That is not true!" he protested. "Besides, I didn't tell your favorite obsession when you were twelve, did I? Does anybody else know about your obsession with Tinkerbell?"

Everyone in the room errupted with laughs as Annabelle's face heated up. She smacks Roland on the arm, hard. She sneers at him, "This isn't facebook, loser. You don't share stuff."

A chorus of 'Ooohhs' went out from the group as Roland glanced apologizingly at Annabelle. To break the anger radiating from Annabelle, Arriane continued.

**Big mistake. Huge. She could tell from the look in his eye that her question was headed right to Daniel.**

**"Oh, I see," Roland said, and laughed. "Well, I couldn't really…" He looked down at her and scratched his nose and gave her what seemed like a sympathetic smile. Then he pointed toward the open hallway door, and when Luce followed his finger she saw Daniel's trim, blond silhouette pass by. "Why don't you just ask him yourself?"**

**Luce's hair was still dripping wet and her feet were still bare when she found herself hovering at the door to a large weight room. She'd intended to go straight into the locker room to change and dry off. She didn't know why this Gabbe thing was shaking her up so much. Daniel could be with whomever he wanted, right? Maybe Gabbe liked guys who flipped her off.**

Gabbe gave a haughty laugh. "Of course not! Daniel flips _you _off, not me. And that's for a reason," she said with a wink.

Everyone was silent as they stared at Gabbe. Finally, it dawned on her how incredibly _wrong_ that sounded. "Wait, I didn't mean that in a bad way! In fact, I just- I didn't mean to say it like- It was an accident, I swear!-" She fumbles with her words, and everyone else just laughs it off.

**Or, more likely, that kind of thing didn't happen to Gabbe.**

**But Luce's body got the better of her mind when she caught another glimpse of Daniel. His back was to her and he was standing in a corner picking out a jump rope from a tangled pile. She watched as he selected a thin navy rope with wooden handles, then moved to an open space in the center of the room. His golden skin was almost radiant, and every movement he made, whether he was rolling out his long neck in a stretch or bending over to scratch his sculpted knee, had Luce completely rapt. She stood pressed against the doorway, unaware that her teeth were chattering and her towel was soaked.**

**When he brought the rope behind his ankles just before he began to jump, Luce was slammed with a wave of deja vu. It wasn't exactly that she felt like she'd seen Daniel jump rope before, but more that the stance he took seemed entirely familiar. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, unlocked his knees, and pressed his shoulders down as he filled his chest with air. Luce could almost have drawn it.**

"Interesting description you got there," Cam said. On the outside, he said it jokingly. But inside, he was envious.

Everyone laughed and chuckled and Luce even smiled. "Excuse my thoughts, then," Luce gladly said.

_I wish she talked about me the way she thought about D in the book, _Cam thought sadly. He'd never really found love after his past girl.

**It was only when Daniel began twirling the rope that Luce snapped out of that trance… and right into another. Never in her life had she seen anyone move like him. It was almost like Daniel was flying. The rope whipped up and over his tall frame so quickly that it disappeared, and his feet—his graceful, narrow feet—were they even touching the ground? He was moving so swiftly, even he must not have been counting.**

**A loud grunt and a thud on the other side of the weight room tore Luce's attention away. Todd was in a heap at the base of one of those knotted climbing ropes. She felt momentarily sorry for Todd, who was looking down at his blistered hands. Before she could look back at Daniel to see whether he'd even noticed, a cold black rush at the edge of her skin made Luce shiver. The shadow swept up on her slowly at first, icy, tenebrous, its limits indiscernible. Then, suddenly rough, it crashed into her body and forced her back. The door to the weight room slammed in her face and Luce was alone in the hallway.**

Everybody visibly tensed and gasped. A few 'Oh My God's from Gabbe filled the room, but other than that, everyone was quiet. Faces filled with worry, shock. Excitement. Watching her. Seeing her reaction.

"You can see these... shadows, right?" Daniel asked. "It's no joke?"

Luce was shocked. "Why would it be a joke? I wouldn't joke about this."

Daniel ignored her question. "Did they ever hurt you before? Like, physically?" he asked, his mouth in a grim, straight line.

Luce shook her head. "Never. Until that thing in the book. Why? What's going on?"

Daniel just shook his head. He exchanged looks with Roland, Arriane, Annabelle, Gabbe, Cam, and even Molly! Everyone except her and Penn. They all gathered in a circle, leaving the two behind. They began talking.

"Do you think it's a sign?" Arriane blurted out.

"Could be, but what does it mean? What would happen?" Cam said, worry filling his eyes.

"I don't know," Daniel said.

"What're you talking about?" Luce asked exasperated. She stood up and tried to enter the circle, but Molly's voice stopped her.

"Sit down!" she sneered, popping her head out and spotting Luce. She turned back to the circle, after demanding.

Stunned, Luce sat down. Annabelle sighed. "Sorry, Luce," she said with a sad expression on her face. "But Molly's right. You can't be involved in this. Not now." She hesitates. "We can't risk it."

After Annabelle turned away, Penn poked her. "What was that about?" she asked.

Luce merely shrugged. "I have no idea. But whatever it is, I have to find out."

She tried eavesdropping, but quickly gave up when their whispers were almost inaudible. But she had a suspicious feeling upon hearing a certain word being repeated the most.

After a few minutes, the circle diverged and everyone sat down. Not a word was said. But Luce swore she could still hear the word that was being repeated: angel.

**"Ow!" she cried, not because she was hurt exactly, but because she had never been touched by the shadows before. She looked down at her bare arms, where it had felt almost like hands had gripped her, shoving her out of the gym.**

**That was impossible—she'd just been standing in a weird place; a draft must have shot through the gymnasium. Uneasily, she approached the closed door and pressed her face up against the small glass rectangle.**

Daniel shook his head. _Those Announcers and their nasty tricks, _he thought darkly. _Can't they even learn to leave her alone?_

He stole a look at her. _I guess we'd have to deal with it, _he thought.

**Daniel was looking around, like he'd heard something. She felt certain he didn't know it was her: He wasn't scowling.**

A few people chortled at this.

**She thought about Roland's suggestion that she just ask Daniel what was up, but quickly dismissed the notion. It was impossible to ask anything of Daniel. She didn't want to bring out that scowl on his face.**

Daniel secretly smiled.

**Besides, any question she might pose would be useless. She'd already heard all she needed to hear last night. She'd have to be some kind of sadist to ask him to admit he was with Gabbe. She turned back toward the locker room when she realized she couldn't leave.**

**Her key.**

**It must have slipped from her hands when she stumbled out of the room. She stood on tiptoes to look down through the small glass panel on the door. There it was, a bronze blunder on the padded blue mat. How had it gotten so far across the room, so close to where he was working out? Luce sighed and pushed the door back open, thinking if she had to go in, at least she'd make it quick.**

_Those sneaky Announcers, _Roland thought. _Always having tricks on their sleeves. But why? What could they possibly want?_

**Reaching for her key, she sneaked one last look at him. His pace was slowing, slowing, but his feet still barely touched the ground. And then, with one final light-as-air bounce, he came to a stop and turned around to face her.**

**For a moment, he said nothing. She could feel herself blush and really wished she wasn't wearing such a horrible bathing suit.**

**"Hi" was all she could think to say.**

**"Hi," he said back, in a much calmer tone of voice. Then, gesturing at her suit, said, "Did you win?"**

**Luce laughed a sad, self-effacing laugh and shook her head. "Far from it."**

**Daniel pursed his lips. "But you were always…"**

**"I was always what?"**

Everyone-as in all the angels and demons-looked at him suspiciously. Daniel slipped up. It happens, but they felt as if this time was more dangerous. More tense. They'd have to be careful this time.

Daniel pursed his lips. "It probably won't happen again," he told the others, ignoring the questioning looks from Luce and Penn.

_I'm sorry, Lucinda. But this is for your own safety._

**"I mean, you look like you might be a good swimmer." He shrugged. "That's all."**

**She stepped toward him. They were standing just a foot apart. Drops of water fell from her hair and pattered like rain on the gym mats. "That's not what you were going to say," she insisted. "You said I was always…"**

**Daniel busied himself coiling the jump rope around his wrist. "Yeah, I didn't mean you you. I meant in general. They're always supposed to let you win your first race here. Unspoken code of conduct for us old-timers."**

Molly tried not to snort. _What a lame excuse, _she thought. _But I guess he ran out of options._

**"But Gabbe didn't win either," Luce said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And she's new. She didn't even get in the pool."**

Gabbe smiled.

**"She's not exactly new, just coming back after some time… off." Daniel shrugged, giving away nothing of his feelings for Gabbe. His obvious attempt to look unconcerned made Luce even more jealous. **

Daniel said, "I assure you, there's nothing you should be jealous about. I'll swear on it," he said sincerely.

Luce smiled. "I hope so," she said.

**She watched him finish looping the jump rope into a coil, the way his hands moved almost as quickly as his feet. And here she was so clumsy and lonely and cold and left out of everything by everyone. Her lip quivered.**

**"Oh, Lucinda," he whispered, sighing heavily.**

**Her whole body warmed at the sound. His voice was so intimate and familiar.**

Luce was suspicious. Why does she feel a strong pull towards Daniel? Why did she feel different when she's around him? And what's with the secrets with the others? He hadn't given her answers _at all, _and it makes her feel even more interested.

_Whatever, it is, Daniel, I'm going to find your secret, _she thought, determined.

**She wanted him to say her name again, but he had turned away. He hooked the jump rope over a peg on the wall. "I should go change before class."**

**She rested a hand on his arm. "Wait."**

**He wrenched away as if he had been shocked—and Luce felt it, too, but it was the kind of shock that felt good.**

A few people snickered, and Luce and Daniel's cheeks heated up. Roland laughed. "Is there something I should know?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No," Daniel answered curtly, nudging Roland with his elbow. Ro laughed again, but didn't say anything more.

**"Do you ever get the feeling…" She raised her eyes to his. Up close, she could see how unusual they were. They seemed gray from far away, but up close there were violet flecks in them. She knew someone else with eyes like that…**

Everyone gasped and looked at each other again. They exchanged a few more looks, like sharing an inside joke without the humor.

"Is it something I said?" Luce asked, almost annoyed.

No one answered.

**"I could swear we've met before," she said. "Am I crazy?"**

Everyone was quiet. They were staring at Luce.

"Do you really think that we've met before?" Daniel asked quietly.

Luce hesitated, then nodded. "I don't know why," she admitted. "It gives me the creeps."

Cam laughed shortly. "Well, you're going to find later on why," he said.

**"Crazy? Isn't that why you're here?" he said, brushing her off.**

**"I'm serious."**

**"So am I." Daniel's face was blank. "And for the record" — he pointed up at a blinking device attached to the ceiling—"the reds do monitor for stalkers."**

**"I'm not stalking you." She stiffened, very aware of the distance between their bodies. "Can you honestly say you have no idea what I'm talking about?"**

**Daniel shrugged.**

_Someone's lying, _Penn thought. _Daniel's lying. He's hiding something. _Penn frowned. _But what? _

She looked at Daniel for a while, and he caught her staring. Penn raised an eyebrow. Daniel shook his head and looked away. She caught his glance on Luce.

_Well, whatever it is, it involves Luce._

**"I don't believe you," Luce insisted. "Look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong. That I've never in my life seen you before this week."**

**Her heart raced as Daniel stepped toward her, placing both hands on her shoulders. His thumbs fit perfectly along the grooves of her collarbone, and she wanted to closer her eyes at the warmth of his touch-but she didn't. She watched as Daniel bowed his head so his nose was nearly touching hers. She could feel his breath on her face. She could smell sweetness on his skin.**

There was a pause. "Well that sounds intimate," Arriane said.

Penn smiled teasingly at Luce. "_Too _intimate, if you ask me!"

Luce and Daniel blushed again, which earned matching smiles.

**He did as she asked. He looked her in the eye and said, very slowly, very clearly, so that his words could not possibly be misunderstood:**

**"You have never in your life seen me before this week."**

Arriane put the still open book down, before Roland. He looked at it with mixed feelings. "Interesting" was all he said.

That was the understatement of the century.

* * *

A/N: you're lucky i'm on my break! (sem-break)


	10. author's note

Hai guys :)))

i know, i know, all of you are all probly disappointed that this is not another chapter. you probly think that i abandoned this fanfic. well, I DIDN'T! i've just been busy, kay, and it was my birthday yesterday. plus, i was studying cos this is my exams week! ergh. i'm so sorry for making errors! and i'm so sorry for keeping you waiting!

i'll try my best to update this Friday, after my exams. okay? okay.


End file.
